Wow you brought up my post haha.
First of all ALWAYS draw a pretty diagram.
Let the radius of the base of the cylinder (ie the little small circle on the bottom have a radius of r centimetres.
I will also let the height be h.
So the volume is
Now if I destroy my special can (nnoooooooooooooooooooooo), I get a net shape like this.
And the total surface area is: The area of 2 circles + the rectangle.
That is,
We have now formed two equations.
We need to eliminate a variable in order to solve these equations. I know that h looks like the odd one out, and I don't want to eliminate r because our equation we are aiming to prove contains r. It would be sensible to eliminate h!
From (1),
Substitute our new result into equation 2.
Some simply multiplication!
YAY first part done.
This is a minimum and maximum problem, I have just constructed the equation necessary to begin solve the problem. Let's see what we can do.
I will differentiate the equation,
We know for stationary points, (min, max)
Edit: Carrotsticks has finish the problem quicker than I.