Compare And Contrast The Determination Of The Mass Of Pennies In The 1980's

From this graph there is a clear difference in the mass of the pennies depending on their year of manufactoring. We can see that there is a clear decrease in mass in the early 1980’s. Since we were not able to collect data for pennies manufactured for the years 1980, 1981, or 1982 in our random stack, it is clear there was a change in the mass of the pennies between in a year between 1980-1983. Even though there is slight variation between the two definite groups of the mass in the pennies, the small differences could have been from external factors explained in the errors section.

4.) Hypothesis: If we were provided with 40 pennies of varying dates of manufacturing then the pennies made before the early 1980’s would have a higher density.

If the experiment shows the pennies made before the 1980’s have a higher density then my hypothesis is plausible.

Hypothesis: The density of a penny is comparable to the density of pure copper.

Test: If we were given a random sample of pennies, then we could measure the mass and the volume of the pennies. From these measured values we could calculate the density. Then we could compare our calculated density to the given density value of copper and we could find the the percentage of error between copper and the measured density.

Conclusion: If the percentage of error between the copper and the measured density of the pennies was large and the values were not in comparison to the density of copper, then we would know that the density of a penny is not the same as the density of pure copper. If the density of the penny had an insignificant percentage of error and was comparable to the density of copper, then the experiment would prove this hypothesis to be

A possible error could have occurred while measuring the mass of the individual pennies, while the pennies were dry and were allowed be measured individually, we did not clean or thoroughly examine each penny for flaws or cleanliness. This may have slightly affected the mass of the penny. Another possible source of error could have been measuring the volume of the water and the pennies in the water. Since we were using a measurement device the was accurate only to whole numbers, we had to make an educated estimate between the values provided by our measuring device. While these measurements are very close to the actual value a more accurate measuring device would have given more significant figures. Another possible source of error could have occurred while measuring the mass of our pennies on the scale. Although we followed the proper steps, it is possible that the scale was not calibrated and the final number given often fluctuated, forcing our group to take an average of the final decimal place