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jmc

geometry intermediate

Problem

An ice cream cone consists of a sphere of vanilla ice cream and a right circular cone that has the same diameter as the sphere. If the ice cream melts, it will exactly fill the cone. Assume that the melted ice cream occupies of the volume of the frozen ice cream. What is the ratio of the cone's height to its radius? (Note: A cone with radius and height has volume , and a sphere with radius has volume .)
Solution
Let be the radius of the sphere and cone, and let be the height of the cone. Then the conditions of the problem imply that Therefore, the ratio of to is .
Final answer
3:1