Solve the following problems using Excel. Please place each problem on a new worksheet in your single workbook. Label areas of the spreadsheet to make it clear where each part of the problem is worked. You may consider separating various parts of problems by a border.
NOTE: You may have to search for various bits of information somewhere, like on the web (?)!
1. Designing a buoy tether
Consider a buoy in the form of a vertical right circular cylinder of outside diameter (D) of 8 feet, and
height (H) of 12 feet. The buoy is a hollow cylinder formed of glass-fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) that
is ½-inch thick. The buoy is to be placed in a large river and tethered to the bottom by a cable that is
80 feet long. The cable is supposed to snap if the water depth exceeds 90 feet. Set up an Excel spreadsheet to compute the force on the cable at different river depths and the force at which the cable should be designed to snap. Create a graph of cable force as a function of river depth.
Helpful information: The force on the cable can be computed from a force balance on the buoy. The downward force due to gravity is the total mass of the buoy multiplied by gravitational acceleration. The upward force on the buoy is given by Archimedes’ principal, that is, the upward force is the mass of
water that the buoy displaces multiplied by gravitational acceleration. For more information about Archimedes’ principal, search online.
2. The following table presents data on the maximum ice thickness in mm (?), average number of days per year of ice cover (??), average number of days the bottom temperature is lower than 8°C (??), and the average snow depth in mm (??) for 13 lakes in Minnesota