Density Lab

Morgan Sulham
Biology 6
November 5th, 2012
Lab Report

Introduction:
Density has more than one definition the first one is the degree of
compactness of a substance for example bone structure. The second
definition is a measure of the amount of information on a storage
medium for example tape or a disk. Density is used in many different
aspects in science, engineering, and industry. You can measure an
object's density by it's properties. In our lab we got the mass and
divided it by the volume and got our density. We took two trials and
divided what each of their density's were to get our average density.
We then compared our average density's for the items and the
handouts average density to see how much we were off by.
Problem:
What are the densities of copper, lead, silicon, and zinc when using the
overflow method?
Hypothesis:
I think that the order of most dense to less dense is going to be lead,
copper, silicon, and then zinc.
Materials:
Paper towels
Scale
Overflow cup
Water
2 Extra beakers (one big, one small)
Graduated cylinder
Copper
Lead
Silicon

 Zinc
Weigh boat
Procedure:
Find the mass of one metal (in grams) by pouring it in a weigh
boat
Take the extra beaker and put it under the spout in the overflow
cup
Take the overflow cup and fill it with water till it overflows in the
beaker
Dump the beaker
Put the beaker back under the spout
Add the metal to the overflow cup
Wait for the water to come out and until it stops
Collect water from overflow cup in extra beaker
Pour water into the graduated cylinder
Use formula (density=mass/volume) to determine density of the
metal
Record data into your note book
Repeat all steps for the remaining metals
Data:
Trial 1:
Element

Mass (g)

Volume (mL)

Density (g/mL)

Lead

145.1

13

11.7

Copper

104.1

15

6.9

Zinc

67.0

14

4.8

Silicon

22.8

22

1.0

Trial 2:
Element

Mass (g)

Volume (mL)

Density (g/mL)

Lead

144.7

14

10.3

Copper

105.0

17

6.2

Zinc

65.7

12

5.5

Silicon

25.9

23

1.1

Final Results:
Element

Book density
(g/mL)
11.4

% Error

Lead

Avg. density
(g/mL)
11

Copper

6.6

8.96

26%

Zinc

15.2

7.13

27%

Silicon

1.1

2.33

52%

3%

Conclusion:
My hypothesis was wrong. If I had just switched zinc and lead I
would have got it right. I was close on my hypothesis though. Some
errors were that we didn't fill the cup back up all the way until it poured
back out and that messed up our results. Another error was that it was
hard to get everything exact, and we couldn't. Three out of four of our
experimental density's were wrong. Lead was really close and we only
had a 3% error that was our best one. Most of them were really far off.
I was kind of close with my hypothesis and my results were really far
off.