Density Block Lab 1A

Introduction:

        In this lab, we needed to figure out the mass of a clear plastic block using its density and volume. Density is the relative heaviness of objects, measured in units of mass. The equation to find density is D=M/V, but to find the mass of the block we used the formula M=DV. My lab partner Jason and I used a ruler and the proper sig figs to measure the length, width, and height of the block to find the volume, then used the density to calculate the mass of the block.

Procedure:

        First things first, Jason and I needed to find the volume of the plastic block. To do this, we each found the length, width, and height 6 times, going every other.

 We put all our data into this spreadsheet!

      Notice how each time we measured the data, it turned out different. Because of this, we found the average of all the tries of the width, length, and height and multiplied it all out to get the volume.  Once we had the volume, we plugged it into the formula to find mass, along with the density which was given to us. Then finally we achieved mass! Yay!

Data:

      Most of our measurement data can be viewed on the table above. We found the final average volume of the block by multiplying 7.09 cm x 9.60 cm x 1.20 cm = 81.68 cm^3. The given density was 1.18 g/cm^3, so by using the M = DV formula we found the density to be 96.38 g. That's only a 0.43% error from the actual mass of 96.8 g! 

Conclusion:

      Jason and I definitely fulfilled the purpose of the lab. We found the mass of the block by measuring it and using our knowledge of the formulas. There was room for possible error regarding the discrepancies in measuring using the ruler, but we fixed that by measuring each side multiple times and averaging our findings. I learned to always gather as much data as possible during an experiment to make the result as accurate as possible. I'll also have to be more careful measuring during future labs!