Try it on paper first. A hint, the key idea and the worked solution are here when you need them.
An irrigation channel on a farm has a cross-section shaped like the parabola . Here and are measured in decimetres (dm), and the origin is at the lowest point of the channel floor. When the channel is full, the water surface is the line . The farmer wants to paint a mark on the channel wall. When the water reaches the mark, the cross-section of the water should be exactly half the cross-section of the full channel. Find the area of the cross-section of the full channel. Then let the water surface be the line , and write the area of the water cross-section in terms of . Set this equal to half of the full area, and solve for . Give the height of the mark above the channel floor in decimetres, to two decimal places. Water flows evenly along the whole length of the channel, so only the cross-section matters. Do not round any number until the last step.
Have you tried it?
Work it out on paper first. It is fine to get stuck or make a mistake: that is how we learn. When you are ready, go through the solution one step at a time, and check each step against your own.
Step 1. The full channel. .
Step 2. Water at depth . The surface meets the parabola at . The area is .
Step 3. Half the area. Set . Then , so .
Check. Half of the full depth is dm, and the mark is higher. That is right, because the channel is narrow near the floor and wide near the top, so more than half of the depth is needed to hold half of the water.
Answer: the full area is , and the mark is dm above the floor.
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The area between an upper curve and a lower curve is , where and are the meeting points. A parabola cut by a line has area , where is the distance between the meeting points.