Discussion
| Column A | Column B | |
| The surface area of a cone with height 3 | The surface area of a cone with radius 3 |
| (A) | Column A is larger |
| (B) | ... |
| (C) | ... |
| (D) | ... |
| (E) | ... |
| (F) | ... |
The solution is
Posted: 09/27/2012 13:29
I realize we don't actually have to know the formulas to the surface area of a cone for this particular problem, but will we need to for the exam?
Posted: 09/27/2012 16:38
Krystie, no, you won't need to know surface area of a cone. You do need to know how to calculate areas for rectangular boxes and cylinders.
Posted: 10/17/2012 22:50
What is the surface area of a cone? And wouldn't the formula be a determining factor as to which variable would be a greater in importance?
Posted: 10/18/2012 17:02
Jaewon, you can google the surface area of a cone. You don't need to know that formula for this problem or for the test. This is a trick question. A cone with height 3 can have any kind of radius. A cone with radius 3 can have any kind of height. So there is not enough information to decide, regardless of how the surface area is calculated.
Posted: 07/25/2013 16:23
I'd argue that you DO need to know the formula, in order to know that you don't have enough information to solve it. For ex., I haven't taken geometry in 8 years, so I did not remember a lick of what finding the surface area of a cone entailed. If not for googling ("knowing") that the surface area requires you to know/calculate the radius of the circle, the length of a side of the cone, etc, then I wouldn't have known I didn't have enough information.
Posted: 10/06/2013 13:51
What is the role of the surface area of the cone?
Posted: 10/07/2013 15:36
Mustafa, this is a trick question. In order to calculate the surface area of a cone, you need to know the height of the cone, and the radius of the base circle. In statements A and B, we are only given one piece of information and not the other. The data are not sufficient to answer the question.