How do you find the circumference of a balloon?

Question

How do you do a circumference of a balloon. Do you put a string around the width of the balloon and measure it in cm or do you do the width and length of a balloon and add it?

Answer 1

This is a bit hard to understand. If the balloon was a perfect sphere, then you would just put a string around it and measure the string.

If it is not a perfect sphere, like if it is one of those sausage balloons, or is otherwise assymetrical, then you have to specify which axis is being measured. You don't add circumferences. If someone wants an average circumference, well then tell them they are a moron and here's the string, do it yoself. I mean why would anyone wnat to know that? Sheesh, life's too short for this kind of bull.

Answer 2

What you need to do is to find a definition of the word "circumference." Once you know what it means, you will be able to measure according to the definitions.

Note, unless the balloon in question is perfect sphere, there are more than one way to measure it. If this becomes a problem, you have to go back to the problem and find out what it really is asking you to measure.

Answer 3

A circle is a shape with all points the same distance from the center. It is named by the center, point A. If you measure the distance around a circle and divide it by the distance across the circle through the center, you will always come close to a particular value, depending upon the accuracy of your measurement. This value is approximately 3.14159265358979323846... We use the Greek letter (pronounced Pi) to represent this value. The number goes on forever. However, using computers, mathematicians have been able to calculate the value of to thousands of places. In short: PI times one half the radius squared.