LAB 1: DENSITY MEASUREMENT OBJECTIVE AND INTRODUCTION This lab is to find the densities of the given metal cylinders by finding the radius of the cylinder and length by use of callipers in order to find the volume and then finding the mass by use of balance. Thus giving us the necessary values to find density. METHOD We measure the diameter of each sample using callipers to the nearest ten thousandth in order to find the radius by dividing by two. We then measure the height or length using the same callipers in order to find the volume by using the following formula: In order to find the mass of each sample we use a balance that measures to the hundredth of a gram. RAW DATA SAMPLE #1 SAMPLE #2 MASS: 26.22 g MASS: 41.75 g LENGTH: 2.332 cm LENGTH: 2.494 cm DIAMETER: 1.268 cm DIAMETER: 1.585 cm RADIUS: 0.634 cm RADIUS: 0.7923 cm VOLUME: 2.94 cc (cubic centimeters) VOLUME: 4.92 cc (cubic centimeters) DENSITY: 8.92 g/cc (grams per cubic cm) DENSITY: 8.49 g/cc (grams per cubic cm) Sample #1 can be concluded to be copper as the density of copper is known to be 8.93 g/cc. As we can also note that sample #2 is most likely to be brass as it’s density is 8.56 g/cc. DATA AND ERROR ANALYSIS As we can tell our sample #2 is not as close to the actual density of brass. This can be an accumulation of things such as improper measurement tools, improperly reading callipers, or just an error during calculation. PERCENTAGE ERROR SAMPLE 1 PERCENTAGE ERROR SAMPLE 2 CONCLUSION As we expected to find the density of each metal cylinder it was prevalent that the steps in which we took for recording and measuring length, diameter, and mass were accurate to a certain degree. As we can see above for sample 1 we achieved a .11% error which means we were close enough to the density of copper that we can for certain say that the metal is copper. In sample 2 however our percentage error is .82% in which we can attribute that to measurement errors as well as wear and tear on the callipers that were used for the lab. In conclusion we proved that we can find the density of a given metal cylinder and match it to the appropriate metal using the density with our calculated volume and measured mass.
