SOLIDS OF REVOLUTION - WASHER METHOD

The disk method can be extended to cover solids of revolution with holes by replacing the
representative disk with a representative washer. The washer is formed by revolving a rectangle
about an axis, as shown. If r and R are the inner and outer radii of the washer and w is the width of
the washer, the volume is given by Volume of washer = (R 2 r 2) w.
To see how this concept can be used to find the volume of a solid of revolution, consider a region
bounded by an outer radius R(x) and an inner radius r(x), as shown.

If the area between two curves is revolved around an axis, a solid is created that is hollow in the
center. When slicing this solid, the sections created are washers, not solid disks. The area of the
smaller circle must be subtracted from the area of the larger one

Horizontal axis of revolution

Vertical axis of revolution

Slice with rectangles perpendicular to axis

Integrate in terms of x

Slice with rectangle perpendicular to axis

Integrate in terms of y

V ( f ( y ) 2 g ( y ) 2 dy V ( f ( x) 2 g ( x) 2 dx
c

Outer Radius (R)

top function
Inner Radius (R)
top function

Width w

Right most
Function

Left most
Function

Example 2 the volume of the solid obtained by rotating the portion of the region bounded by
and

hat lies in the first quadrant about the y-

axis.
Solution
First, lets get a graph of the bounding region and a graph of the object. Remember that we only
want the portion of the bounding region that lies in the first quadrant. There is a portion of the
bounding region that is in the third quadrant as well, but we don't want that for this problem.

There are a couple of things to note with this problem. First, we are only looking for the volume of the
walls of this solid, not the complete interior as we did in the last example.
Next, we will get our cross section by cutting the object perpendicular to the axis of rotation. The
cross section will be a ring (remember we are only looking at the walls) for this example and it will be
horizontal at some y. This means that the inner and outer radius for the ring will be x values and so
we will need to rewrite our functions into the form
correct form for this example.

here are the functions written in the

Here are a couple of sketches of the boundaries of the walls of this object as well as a typical ring.
The sketch on the left includes the back portion of the object to give a little context to the figure on the
right.

The inner radius in this case is the distance from the y-axis to the inner curve while the outer radius is
the distance from the y-axis to the outer curve. Both of these are then x distances and so are given
by the equations of the curves as shown above.
The cross-sectional area is then,

Working from the bottom of the solid to the top we can see that the first cross-section will occur
at
and the last cross-section will occur at
These will be the limits of integration. The volume is then,