Sometime this past winter, I was in a snowball fight... and I had two left when we had to call it quits. As it happened, they were both spheres and one had exactly twice the diameter as the other.

I left the two on the ground, when we quit... and the weather started to get warmer. The snowballs started to melt. The melting only occurred at their surface, so the speed at which the balls melted was proportional to only the surface of the (remainder of the) snowballs.

How much (volume) was left of the small snowball when half the volume of the larger had melted?

(In reply to solution by Charlie)

Not that your conclusion is incorrect, but it is not clear why the problem's "the speed at which the balls melted was proportional to only the surface" implies your "The radius of each snowball is decreasing at a constant rate".

Posted by Thalamus on 2004-06-14 13:43:37