Introduction and Theory: The lab conducted was to investigate the density of not only copper but also diet and non-diet soda. Techniques used in the experiment included water-displacement, measuring copper’s dimensions, and using volumetric pipettes to measure out specific soda volumes.
Beginning Question(s): How does the use of two experimental methods, improve the chances of calculating the density of copper? How does the density of non-diet soda compare to that of diet soda measured at different volumes?
Safety Statement: In both labs, students need to handle the volumetric pipettes, balance scales, and glass equipment carefully. Any glass equipment shall be properly disposed of in its glass disposal can. The soda needs to …show more content…
Sources of error included reading the caliper incorrectly, recording the dimensions incorrectly, weighing the copper pieces incorrectly, and spilling water out of the graduated cylinder. For the soda experiment, neither soda struck me as denser than the other. Using the volumetric pipette to find the volume and mass created more room for error. Sources of error included improperly filling the volumetric pipette to the line, weighing the empty and full beaker incorrectly, and not properly recording the numbers with their …show more content…
What if one method would work better than the other? In the end, both methods of finding the density of copper worked well. Based on the class averages, each averaged density of the four copper pieces contains numerical values within + 1.000000 significant figures of each other. For example, the class average density of the small rectangular copper piece for the caliper method is 8.597309558 g/cm^3 and the density of the water displacement method is 8.852631895 g/cm^3. The density of the regular soda and the diet soda differed. The class average density of regular coke is 1.042095666 g/mL and the class average density for diet-soda is 1.001044424 g/mL. A can of coke floated in a bucket of water because it has more sugar than the can of diet coke. Sugar is heavy which makes the regular coke denser than the diet