What pressure is exerted on the bottom of a 0.500-m- wide by 0.900-m-long gas tank that can hold 50.0 kg of gasoline by the weight of the gasoline in it when it is full?

Video Transcript

This is College Physics Answers with Shaun Dychko. We want to know the pressure exerted by 50.0 kilograms of gasoline on the bottom of a gas tank that has a length of 0.900 meters and a width of 0.500 meters. So the pressure will be the total weight of the gasoline— that will be the force that it exerts on the bottom of the tank— and that will be its mass times gravitational field strength and we divide that by the area of this rectangular bottom which is this length times this width. So we have 50.0 kilograms times 9.80 newtons per kilogram divided by 0.900 meters times 0.500 meters and that gives 1.09 times 10 to the 3 pascals.