COLLEGE PHYSICS LABORATORY EXPERIMENT
DENSITY OF WATER
OBJECTIVES
• Verify that the mass of a substance is directly proportional to its volume.
• Determine the value for the density of water at room temperature.
THEORY
When we measure the mass Mw of a given volume Vw of water, their ratio Mw /Vw ≡ ρw
is observed to be a constant known as the density of water. At room temperature (∼ 20 Co ),
the density of water is
−3
ρth
w = 1.00 g cm
MATERIAL & PROCEDURE
Method I
Method II
• Material
- 600 mL beaker
- 100 mL graduated cylinder
- triple-beam balance (1g)
• Material
- 100 mL graduated cylinder
- 5 mL pipette
- electronic balance (0.01g)
• Procedure
- Measure mass of 50 mL water
- Repeat with increments of 50 mL
- Record data (volume & mass)
• Procedure
- Measure mass of 5 mL water
- Repeat with increments of 5 mL
- Record data (volume & mass)
DATA ANALYSIS
• Graph Mass versus Volume using data from both procedures
• Compute mean value and standard deviation for water density for each procedure
• Compute percent error and percent uncertainty for each procedure