The volume of a cube is increasing at the rate of 8 cm3/s. How fast is the surface area increasing when the length of an edge is 12 cm?
Let a be the length of a side, V be the volume and S be the surface area of the cube.
Then, V = a3 and S = 6a2 where a is the function of time t.
Now, It is given that
Then, by using the chain rule, we get,
………………(1)
So, when a = 12cm, then,
Therefore, if the length of the edge of the cube is 12cm, then the surface area is increasing at the rate of .