Question

Spreading rate of spilled liquid.A contract engineer atDuPont Corp. studied the rate at which a spilled volatileliquid will spread across a surface (Chemical EngineeringProgress, January 2005). Assume 50 gallons of methanol

spills onto a level surface outdoors. The engineer used derived empirical formulas (assuming a state of turbulent-freeconvection) to calculate the mass (in pounds) of the spillafter a period of time ranging from 0 to 60 minutes. The calculatedmass values are given in the table. Is there evidenceto indicate that the mass of the spill tends to diminish astime increases?

Support your answer with a scatterplot.

Short answer

There is evidence that with time mass of the spill diminishes.

Step-by-step solution

Interpreting whether the mass of the spill decreases with an increase in time

Looking at the data in the table, we can say that as time increases, the mass of the spill reduces.

But to make it easier to identify, we will create a scatterplot of the data from the table. We will plot the time on the x-axis and the mass on the y-axis.

The graph is given below:

Looking at the downward slope of the graph makes it easier to identify a negative correlation between the time and mass of the spill.

The downward sloping graph is evidence that the mass of the spill diminishes as time increases.