Density Exploration Lab

The Density Exploration lab called for us to use two different methods to calculate the density of copper with various shapes and sizes. The second experiment called for us to devise an experiment to calculate the differences in density between soft drinks. Rather than calculating using two different methods to calculate for the same substance we had two different soft drinks, diet and non-diet Coca-Cola. We then used two volumetric pipets to measure the volumes of the soft drink, then placed the soda in a beaker to calculate the mass using an analytical balance. The questions that I considered before beginning the experiment were, “How does each method of calculating density affect the outcome?’ “How does the age of copper affect density”

I can report that the method used to calculate the density of the copper does affect the results of the density. The caliper method of measuring density is more accurate than the water displacement method. I conducted that the size and shape of the copper pieces does not affect the density of the copper, but the methods that are used to calculate the the density of the copper does affect the results. Based on the data that the class calculated, I found that the caliper method was more accurate. The types of copper pieces that we used were a short rectangular shaped piece of copper, and longer but still rectangular piece of copper, a short but cylindrical piece and a longer cylindrical piece of copper. The standard deviation for the the caliper method much

I calculated 11mL, 15mL and 20mL of the diet, unsweetened Coca-Cola. When calculating the density I used the same density formula that was used to calculate the density of the copper. I used two volumetric pipets for each measurement and did three trials for each of the three different volumes, accounting for a total of nine measurements. From our findings we calculated that the average density of the diet Coca-Cola was 1.026256481 g/mL while the traditionally sweetened or regular coke had a density of 0.9612834659 g/mL. This was very surprising to me as I thought that the density of the regular Coca-Cola would have been more due to the different types of sweeteners used. The data collected also did not seem consistent with the water test when the two cans were put into water. When the two cans are placed in water the regular coke sinks to the bottom, while the diet coke floats to the top implying that it would be less dense than the regular coke. With the calculations that I did with the nine different trials I calculate an average density for the diet coke to be 0.9945 g/mL which is lower than the classes average calculated density for the diet