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Lab Report Chemistry Lab

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Title: Is there a correlation between the mass it takes to submerge 1cm^3 of a material and its density?
Results

Table
Material
Volume of material (cm^3)
Average mass to submerge (g)
Mass to submerge per cm^3 (g)
Density (kgm^3)
Polyethylene
317.25
400.00
1.26
0.09
Cubic Polystyrene
42.88
51.67
1.20
0.03
Spherical Polystyrene
33.50
58.33
1.74
0.06
Aerated Foam
252.00
283.33
1.12
0.05
Dense Foam
3.88
5.00
1.28
0.49

Graph

Description of Results
In the weight to submerge, by far the most buoyant was the sphere (the third sample), which also has a slightly higher density than the others surrounding it. By far the most dense was the heavy foam (far right), which had an around average buoyancy. The body-board foam (far left) was slightly more dense than other foams, but had an average buoyancy. Despite being made of the same material, …show more content…

Due to this, it would appear to mean that denser objects are more buoyant. This flies in the face of common sense, but both the slight increases in both density and buoyancy for the spherical polystyrene (middle) and dense foam (far right) would seem to indicate this. Archimedes principle doesn’t apply either, because the larger foams (Polyethylene, Aerated Foam) were the largest and flattest, but weren’t especially buoyant.

Analysis (analyse your data with respect to precision, reliability, sources of errors, etc.)

I believe that our research could have been far more thorough. Our final result flies in the face of common sense, for example metal is far denser than foam, but a metal ball is going to the bottom of the bucket). Our data was badly measured, only half our group was in the experiment (the other two were sick, they weren’t slacking off) and the measuring didn’t account for how we tied the weights to the

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