Hydrostatic force
Problem 5.367 · easy
A vertical plate shaped like a triangle with a 3-ft horizontal top edge and its vertex 4 ft below that edge is submerged in water with its top at the surface. Find the force of the water on one side. (Water weighs \( \displaystyle \frac{312}{5}\ \text{lb}/\text{ft}^3 \).)
- Let y be depth below the surface. A horizontal strip at depth y has width w(y) = 3 - 3*y/4 and pressure 312/5·y.Reviewed
- \[ \int\limits_{0}^{4} \frac{312 y \left(3 - \frac{3 y}{4}\right)}{5}\, dy = \frac{2496}{5} \]Force = ∫ (pressure)(width) dy over the plate.✓ Proved
Answer \( \frac{2496}{5} \approx 499.2\ \text{lb} \)
✓ Nihil obstat Lines: 1 proved, 1 reviewed. The answer was also checked a second way, without looking at the solution. Reviewers found nothing wrong with the explanation.
The full receipt
| Line | Status | Checked by | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Reviewed | reviewers: gpt-oss:20b, qwen3.6:27b-mlx | a sentence; read, not computed |
| 2 | ✓ Proved | sympy 1.14.0 | simplify(lhs - rhs) reduced to 0 |
| answer, a second way | ✓ Checked independently | sympy 1.14.0 + mpmath 1.3.0 | numerical quadrature |
Reviewers
gpt-oss:20b: passqwen3.6:27b-mlx: pass — The solution correctly models the width of the triangular plate as a linear function of depth and integrates the product of pressure and width over the correct bounds. The setup and calculation are sound.
Every verdict on record (4)
gpt-oss:20b: pass 2026-10-07qwen3.6:27b-mlx: pass 2026-10-07 — The solution correctly models the width of the triangular plate as a linear function of depth and integrates the product of pressure and width over the correct bounds. The setup and calculation are sound.qwen3.6:27b-mlx: pass 2026-10-07 — The setup correctly models the width as a linear function of depth and integrates pressure times width over the correct depth interval. The calculation is correct.gpt-oss:20b: pass 2026-10-07
Proved: SymPy reduced the difference between the two sides to zero. Checked independently: a separate
method, named above, confirmed it. Checked numerically: the two sides agree at every sampled point, which is evidence,
not proof. Reviewed: a model or a person read it; that is all a sentence can have. Solution by
generator:structured/hydrostatic_force, checked 2026-10-07 with SymPy 1.14.0.