Aluminum Foil Lab
Introduction:
In this lab, the class explored the hypothetical thickness of Aluminum foil. Given only a piece of Aluminum foil from the instructor, students had to figure out how to measure the extremely thin piece of foil through their knowledge of chemistry so far. However, first the density of aluminum had to be found via a aluminum object.
Procedure:
To find the density, the mass and volume had to be found. To find the mass, we brought the object to the scale and found the foil was 80.3 grams. We then had to tackle the volume. To do this, we utilized the water displacement method to find the volume. By dropping the aluminum object in water and seeing how much the water rose from a set point of 250 mL told us what the volume was. The volume turned out to be 30 mL. In total, the density of Aluminum was proven to be 3 g/cm^3.
80.3
Density = --------------
30
Finding the Aluminum foil was an easier deal. First we measured the two dimensional sides (9 and 9.3) to find the product of the length and width, which was 83.7. With the density given, only the mass was left to find. We took the foil to the scale and found that it was 0.49 grams. With this we were able to find the width of the foil with this equation.
0.49
3 = ---------------
83.7r
R then turned out to be 0.0019 cm. Then we needed to change cm into mm, turning 0.0019 into 0.019 mm.
Conclusion:
Overall the thickness of the aluminum foil was not that hard to find. Using the density of Aluminum foil, we were able to focus all attention to the aluminum foil itself. Replacing the thickness or height with R, we were able to form 83.7r as the total. The mass was straight forward and yielded a 0.49 grams. Together with all this information, we were able to calculate what the final thickness was. From this lab, I learned further to hone my skills in finding density, mass and volume.
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