elena wonders how much water is would take to fill her cup. she drops her pencil in her cup and notices that is just fits diagonally. (see the diagram.) the pencil is 17 cm long and the cup is 15 cm tall . how much water can the cup hold? explain your reasoning

Step-by-step explanation:

Let's assume the cup is a cylinder. The pencil length is simulates a diagonal (hypothenuse), which forms a right triangle with the height of the cylinder and the diameter at the bottom. So, we apply Pythagorean's Theorem.

Solving for , we have

Therefore, the diameter of the cylinder is 8 centimeres, which means its radius is 4 centimeters by definition.

The volume of a cylinder is defined as

Where is the radius and is the height. Replacing values, we have

Therefore, the cup can hold 240π cubic centimeters of water.