Question

The test tubes shown here contain equal amounts of the specified motor oils. Identical metal spheres were dropped at the same time into each of the tubes, and a brief moment later, the spheres had fallen to the heights indicated in the illustration. Rank the motor oils in order of increasing viscosity, and explain your reasoning:

Short answer

\({\rm{SAE 20 < SAE 30 < SAE 40 < SAE50}}\)_{is the oil sample of viscosity.}

Step-by-step solution

To rank the motor oils

The higher the viscosity of oil, the more slowly the sphere will descend. Therefore, we can say that depth to which the sphere has descended is inversely proportional to the viscosity of oil.

Hence we can say that the relative viscosities of these oil samples is \({\rm{SAE 20 < SAE 30 < SAE 40 < SAE50}}\)