The Water Cube - The Problems
August 18, 2008

One of the venues China built to house Olympic events is a building known as The Water Cube. It is a state-of-the-art building and holds what some call “the fastest pool in history.” The team of engineers and scientists that worked together to create it worked hard to reduce water disturbance for the swimmers, and so they created an Olympic sized pool that is 1 meter deeper than other Olympic pools. It seems as though they were successful, world records are falling at an amazing rate—often from one heat to the next! Beyond that, records that are normally beaten by a small margin are being CRUSHED.

Olympic pools must be 50 meters long and 25 meters wide. What volume of water, in cubic meters, is required to fill the extra space created by the extra depth?

During the Olympics, the water cube can seat a maximum of 17,000 people. Only 6,000 of these seats are permanent, the rest are temporary and will be removed after the Olympic Games. What percent of the seats in the water cube are temporary? Express your answer to the nearest tenth.

One of Phelps’ many world records was set in the 400-meter individual medley. His time was 4 minutes and 3.84 seconds. What was his average speed in kilometers per hour? Express your answer as a decimal to the nearest hundredth

The solutions to this week's problems will be posted in the archive on Monday, August 25th, 2008.