The Peachoid

Off Interstate 85 in Gaffney, South Carolina, there is a large spherical water tank shaped and painted to look like a peach. It was built in 1980-81. Although peaches are often associated with Georgia, South Carolina produces more peaches, and Gaffney is home of the South Carolina Peach Festival. The peach-shaped water tank, called the "Peachoid," holds 1,000,000 gallons of water.

The idea for the Peachoid came on a night when the Gaffney Board of Public Works was trying to figure out how to get help paying for a new elevated water storage tank. They decided having a tank in the shape of a peach would make this such a unique tank that represented the area that the government would help with funding.

It took five months to design and mold the steel for the tank. The foundation weighs 10 million pounds. The leaf near the top of the tank is 60 feet long, 16 feet wide, and weighs 7 tons, or 14,000 pounds.

In Exercises 13, use the information above.

1. Find the radius, diameter, and circumference of the Peachoid in feet. One gallon is equal to 0.1337 cubic feet. Round your results to two decimal places.

2. Find the surface area. (You can just find the surface area of the round peach part, not the full tank itself.)

3. The company that made the steel framework for the Peachoid had an agreement with the city of Gaffney that they would not build another peachoid for fifteen years. Now, there is a peachoid tank off Interstate 65 in Clanton, Alabama. It only holds a half-million gallons of water. How does the radius of the Clanton tank compare to the radius of the tank in Gaffney.