Problem Statement According To A Recent TV Commercial Americ
Problem Statement According to a Recent TV Commercial Americans Cons
According to a recent TV commercial, Americans consumed so much bottled water last year that the bottles—if laid end-to-end—would circle the Earth 190 times at the Equator. The problem is to estimate the total number of bottles used and the average water consumption per person based on given data, and to generalize this calculation for any country with different parameters. The program will involve creating a BottledWaterCalculator class with methods to store, access, and modify data, as well as compute the total number of bottles and per capita water consumption in gallons. A tester class will instantiate the calculator, demonstrate method calls, and handle input/output tasks. The specific data to use includes the country's name, population, number of earth circumferences, and average bottle dimensions, with the capacity to update bottle dimensions and recalculate results.
Paper For Above instruction
Introduction
The environmental and health impacts of bottled water consumption have become increasingly significant, prompting widespread interest in quantifying usage patterns across different populations. A recent advertising campaign highlighted the colossal scale of bottled water consumption in the United States by illustrating that the bottles used in a year—if placed end-to-end—would encircle the Earth 190 times. This vivid visualization underscores the vast scale of plastic waste and water use associated with bottled water, and it also raises compelling questions about individual and national water consumption. To address these questions systematically, developing a computational model that estimates such consumption based on key parameters can be enlightening and useful for environmental studies, policy-making, and consumer awareness. This paper presents a structured approach to modeling bottled water consumption using an object-oriented paradigm, specifically through a BottledWaterCalculator class, complemented by a driver class to demonstrate its functionality.
Design of the BottledWaterCalculator Class
The core component of our solution is the BottledWaterCalculator class, which encapsulates all data relevant to water consumption calculations. The class's private instance variables include the country’s name, population, number of times the bottles would circle the Earth, the average bottle length in inches, and the average bottle volume in fluid ounces. Store these variables with types appropriate for their data: String for the country name, int for population, and double for the numerical values.
To initialize these variables, the class provides a constructor with parameters corresponding to each data point. Additionally, the class provides accessor (“get”) methods to retrieve each piece of data, supporting encapsulation principles, and a mutator (“set”) method to update the bottle dimensions.
The class also contains two primary computational methods:
- calculateTotalBottles() — which computes how many bottles are used in total, based on the total length of bottles laid end-to-end (number of circumferences times Earth's circumference divided by bottle length in inches, adjusting units accordingly).
- calculateAverageWaterPerPerson() — which calculates the average water consumption per person in gallons, derived by dividing total water volume (total number of bottles times individual bottle volume in gallons) by the population.
The class maintains no output functions, aligning with best practices of separation of concerns: data storage and processing are handled within the class, while output is managed externally in the driver class.
Implementation of the Tester Class
The driver or tester class contains the main method and performs the following steps:
- Create a BottledWaterCalculator object with the specified data for the USA: population of 350 million, 190 circumferences, bottle length of 8.5 inches, and volume of 12 ounces.
- Use the accessor methods to retrieve and print each stored data value.
- Invoke the calculation methods to determine total bottles used and average water per person, then print these computed results.
- Alter the bottle dimensions using the mutator method: change length to 9 inches and volume to 16.9 ounces.
- Retrieve and print the updated bottle dimensions to confirm the change.
- Recalculate and print the total bottles used and per capita water consumption based on new data.
Calculations and Constants
Key constants in the problem include the Earth's circumference at the Equator, set at 24,902 miles, and the conversion factors: 128 ounces per gallon. To ensure clarity and maintainability, these constants are defined as static final variables within the class.
The calculations involve converting the Earth's circumference to inches (since bottle length is in inches) and determining the total number of bottles by dividing the total length (number of circumferences multiplied by Earth's circumference in inches) by the bottle length. The total volume of water is obtained by multiplying the number of bottles by individual bottle volume, then converting ounces to gallons for the average per person calculation.
Conclusion
This model provides an efficient, scalable way to simulate bottled water consumption across various countries, accounting for differences in population, bottle size, and total usage. By encapsulating data and behavior within a dedicated class, the solution adheres to object-oriented principles, ensuring modularity and ease of maintenance. The approach also emphasizes the importance of constants for fixed values, and highlights the separation of computational logic from input/output operations, promoting clean code design suitable for further extension or integration into larger environmental impact assessments.
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