Introduction:

Cleaning and organizing are one of the most therapeutic and time consuming tasks in a
household. My mom spends at least an hour a day tidying up the house at the
beginning and end of the day. One day I decided to help my mom by cleaning and
organizing my room, particularly my dresser. I noticed that my mom used several bowls
to hold my cufflinks and watches, however the bowl holding my watches was
overflowing so I decided to find a bigger bowl to hold them. After turning over the entire
house I found a bowl that was different from the other bowls in the drawer. It looked
relatively small but could retain larger volumes of objects in it, I couldn’t help but wonder
what the volume of the bowl could be and whether or not the bowl could be modelled to
find out the volume.

One of the major topics I have been enjoying in maths is calculus. Although the
questions were tricky, after many worksheets I've become very interested in it,
especially integration. I have always been keen on learning new concepts and then
using a pragmatic approach to apply the theory in real life. In mathematics, linking the
theoretical and actual values seems to be very challenging as the final values are either
higher or lower than the theoretical values. Perhaps this math exploration will allow me
to explore the methods of modelling, calculate the volume and verify if the actual and
theoretical volumes are similar. Hence, my aim is to compare the volume of the bowl
generated through integration with the actual volume obtained.

Background information:

The shape of the bowl seemed to look similar to a parabola, a parabola is a

plane curve which is mirror-symmetrical and is approximately U-shaped.
The parabola is the locus of points in that plane that are equidistant from both the
directrix and the focus.

A parabolic curve is usually generated by a quadratic equation in the form

2 2
𝑦 = 𝑎𝑥 + 𝑏𝑥 + 𝑐, however the simple equation of a parabola, i.e. 𝑦 = 𝑥 also
produces a parabola shown below.
In order to improve the accuracy, I wanted to find other curves that would fit my bowl.
Hence I did some research on the different types of curves and found 2 particular
curves that can be used to obtain the volume of the bowl.

The first one is exponential function. An exponential function is defined as

a function with a positive constant other than 1 raised to a variable exponent. The
general equation of an exponential curve is:

𝑥
𝑦 = 𝑎𝑏

𝑎 = Vertical Stretch

𝑏 = Base of the exponent

Since I have learned the concept of exponential functions, I can plot the curve for the
required domain and find the volume with respect to the y axis. Here is the graph of an
exponential function:
The second curve that I found which could be used to find the volume of the bowl was a
logistic function known as sigmoid curve which is widely used in population studies
which increases exponentially for smaller values of the variable, and approaches a
constant value asymptotically for larger values. This equation for this function is:

𝑐
𝑦= −𝑏𝑥
1+𝑎𝑒

The curve produced when using this equation is:

Volume Of Revolution:

To find the volume of the bowl, I decided to use the volume of revolution formula. The
volume of revolution is the volume generated by the rotation of a plane figure about an
axis in its plane. This can be seen in the figure below:

For example, let’s take the function 𝑦 = 𝑓(𝑥) from 𝑎≤𝑥 ≥ 𝑏, shown in the figure above.
The area is marked with limits 𝑎 and 𝑏and is shaded in blue. This function is rotated
about the 𝑥 𝑎𝑥𝑖𝑠 which produces the enclosed 3D figure whose volume can then be
calculated.
Similarly a curve defined by the equation 𝑥 = 𝑓(𝑦) from 𝑎≤𝑥 ≥ 𝑏 is shown in the figure
below. When this figure is rotated about the 𝑦 𝑎𝑥𝑖𝑠, the enclosed 3D figure is produced
whose volume can then be calculated.

After obtaining the graph, the volume of the solid is calculated through integration, since
I learned this concept in IB I was able to do it with no errors. The three methods that are
commonly used to find the volume are, disk, shell and pappus's centroid theorem. I will
be using the disc method to find the volume of the solid as it will produce the most
accurate value for this shape. In the disk method, the volume of the solid is found by
adding the volumes of thin circular discs from limit a to limit b. The formula used in the
disk method to calculate the volume is:

𝑏
2
𝑉 = ∫ π(𝑓(𝑥)) 𝑑𝑥
𝑎

Wherein:

𝑓(𝑥) = 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑥𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛

𝑎 = 𝑢𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑟 𝑙𝑖𝑚𝑖𝑡

𝑏 = 𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟 𝑙𝑖𝑚𝑖𝑡

𝑑𝑥 = 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛

Modelling the Bowl:

To find the volume, I needed to create a mathematical model for which I needed to find
the measurements/dimensions of the bowl. I used a ruler to measure the dimensions of
the glass bowl. Once I obtained the accurate measurements I used my phone camera
to take a picture which will later be imported onto geogebra. I placed the bowl on a
white floor and before a backdrop of a brown door so that it is more prominent and
visible in the picture. Here is the picture taken:

The measurements obtained were:

Height: 10 cm

Upper: 26.5 cm

Lower: 13 cm

After the measurements were taken, the picture was imported into geogebra, a graphing
software to obtain the coordinates. The actual capacity of the bowl was found to be ----
which was found by filling the bowl to the top with water and then measuring the volume
of the water to obtain the volume of the bowl which was ----. As mentioned earlier, In
this math exploration I will be comparing the actual volume with the theatrical volume
and find the difference, if there is any. The theoretical volume will be calculated using
integration. To calculate this, the picture of the bowl was aligned with the x axis and the
size of the bowl was adjusted based on the actual size to the ratio of 1: 1 based on the
measurements given above, the coordinates were plotted.

Figure 6

Table 1: Coordinates of the bowl:

The coordinates from figure 6 were converted to a table form for x and y coordinates:

𝐶𝑜 𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑥 𝑦 𝐶𝑜 𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑥 𝑦

𝐶 12. 42 10. 46 𝑀 8. 06 2. 96
𝐷 12. 15 9. 52 𝑁 7. 34 2. 45
𝐸 11. 97 8. 71 𝑂 6. 66 1. 96
𝐹 11. 61 7. 86 𝑃 6. 03 1. 55
𝐺 11. 16 6. 99 𝑄 0 0. 43
𝐻 10. 8 6. 14 𝑅 1. 08 0. 52
𝐼 10. 31 5. 38 𝑆 2. 25 0. 65
𝐽 9. 86 4. 75 𝑇 3. 29 0. 74
𝐾 9. 32 4. 12 𝑈 4. 32 0. 88
𝐿 8. 66 3. 48 𝑉 5. 13 1. 10

Modeling the shape using parabola:

After obtaining the coordinates from geogebra, I selected 3 coordinates specifically to

calculate a precise answer. I chose the top most, lower most and a coordinate in the
middle to increase the précis

eness. Hence the 3 coordinates that were chosen was:

𝐶: (12. 42, 10. 46)

𝑅: (1. 08, 0. 52)

𝑀: (8. 06, 2. 96)

I then substituted the coordinates in the general quadratic equation to acquire 3

equations with variables a, b, c:

2
12. 42 𝑎 + 12. 42𝑏 + 𝑐 = 10. 46

2
1. 08 𝑎 + 1. 08𝑏 + 𝑐 = 0. 52

2
8. 06 𝑎 + 8. 06𝑏 + 𝑐 = 2. 96

These values were then written into a matrix form to obtain the values of a, b, c. A
matrix is a set of numbers arranged in rows and columns so as to form a rectangular
array and is used to represent and solve various equations.

This matrix will be written in the form:

𝐴𝑋 = 𝐵

Wherein

𝐴 =first matrix
𝑋 =Unknown matrix

𝐵 =RHS matrix

The matrix form for the aforementioned equations:

[154. 25 12. 42 1 1. 17 1. 08 1 64. 96 8. 06 1 ]. [𝑎 𝑏 𝑐 ] = [10. 46 0. 52 2. 96 ]

In order to solve this system of linear equations, I chose the inverse matrix
method, since this method is shorter and more easily understandable. Additionally to
get the values of a, b, c the inverse of matrix A has to be calculated. In order to do this I
will be using the Gauss Jordan method as it is a more efficient method to calculate the
inverse.

This is achieved by transforming the augmented matrix obtained from the original matrix
into reduced row-echelon form by means of row operations

General steps to do Gauss Jordan Method:

1. Swap the rows so that all rows with all zero entries are on the bottom
2. Swap the rows so that the row with the largest, leftmost nonzero entry is on top.
3. Multiply the top row by a scalar so that the top row's leading entry becomes 1.
4. Add/subtract multiples of the top row to the other rows so that all other entries in
the column containing the top row's leading entry are all zero.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 for the next leftmost nonzero entry until all the leading entries
are 1.
6. Swap the rows so that the leading entry of each nonzero row is to the right of the
leading entry of the row above it.

Hence here are the calculations of finding the inverse matrix using the gauss
Jordan method:
The result was checked with GDC which is the same.
As we know that X = A −1B, we calculate the unknown values as
The values of a, b and c were then substituted in the general quadratic equation:

2
𝑦 = 0. 1208328𝑥 − 0. 7549482𝑥 + 1. 1938982

Therefore to calculate the volume x needs to made as the subject of the formula which
is:

2
0. 1208328𝑥 − 0. 7549482𝑥 + 1. 1938982 − 𝑦 = 0
Using the quadratic formula x was made the subject of the equation:
2
−𝑏± 𝑏 −4𝑎𝑐
𝑥= 2𝑎

2
0.7549482± (−0.7549482) −4×0.1208328(1.1938982−𝑦)
𝑥= 2×0.1208328

0.7549482+ 0.48833312𝑦−0.00710146
𝑥= 0.2416656

Now you have to substitute the x value into the volume formula to get the volume of
bowl:

𝑏
2
𝑉 = ∫ π(𝑓(𝑥)) 𝑑𝑥
𝑎

𝑏 2
𝑉 = ∫π
𝑎
( 0.7549482+ 0.48833312𝑦−0.00710146
0.2416656 ) 𝑑𝑥

Once the values are substituted into the equation the limits a,b should be calculated for
the curve obtained.

A: 1

B: 10.46

10.46 2
𝑉= ∫ π
1
( 0.7549482+ 0.48833312𝑦−0.00710146
0.2416656 ) 𝑑𝑥
Exponential graph using regression:

(−𝑥)
Equation of the graph : 𝑦 = 0. 315 • 0. 76704

Limitations:

● Since the rim of the bowl was bent at the edges and the ruler was not completely
flat on the top, accuracy was a major issue when taking the container
measurements.
● The thickness of the container is ignored when calculating the volume of the
liquid.
● There are minor errors in the equation of the curve, despite the fact that the glass
bowl used is very thin in nature.
● The equation of the graph was created by taking exterior measurements of the
container.
 ● Given that the majority of the functions and measurements were performed using
online technology, the programme may have used approximations, reducing the
precision of my findings.
Conclusion:

Despite the fact that this investigation is just a basic modelling of the bowl using
different functions, I have learned a lot.

After experimenting with a variety of methods and curves, I discovered that the
exponential function was the most reliable for measuring volume. Initially, I thought the
model would be the best fit for the parabolic function, but after further consideration, I
found that the model was the least fitting because the bowl's base is relatively flat. The
volume obtained using the exponential model, On the other hand, was very similar to
the existing volume.

Bibliography:
● https://help.sketchup.com/en/sketchup/modeling-specific-shapes-objects-and-buil
ding-features-3d
● https://www.pinterest.com/pin/372321094186947548/
● https://www.mathsisfun.com/calculus/integration-introduction.html