Random point on a snowman below 39 inches
Question
A snowman is a stack of three spheres touching end to end, with radii (bottom), (middle) and (top) inches, the bottom one resting on the ground. Treat the whole surface of all three spheres as exposed, and choose a point uniformly from that total surface. What is the probability the point is no higher than inches above the ground?
Short answer
. By Archimedes' hat-box theorem, a horizontal slice of a sphere has area proportional to its height. The bottom sphere (height –) counts fully, and is exactly the middle sphere's equator, so half of it counts: out of , giving .
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Continuous Random Variables and Probability Density Functions
- Cumulative Distribution Functions
- Sample Spaces, Events, and the Probability Axioms
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