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A student in an undergraduate physics lab is studying Archimede's principle of bouyancy. The student is given a brass cylinder and using a triple beam balance finds the mass to be 3.21 kg. The density of this particular alloy of brass is 8.38 g/cm³. The student ties a massless string to one end of the cylinder and submerges it into a tank of water where there is an apparent reduction in the weight of the cylinder. With this information, calculate the volume of the cylinder and the tension in the string when it was submerged in the tank of water. The density of water is 1.00 g/cm³ and the acceleration due to gravity is g = 9.81 m/s².

Volume of the cylinder: _____ cm³

User ZhengCheng
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Final answer:

Using the density formula, the volume of the brass cylinder is calculated to be 383.05 cm³, and the tension in the string when submerged is 27.72 N, which is derived from the apparent weight loss due to the water displacement.

Step-by-step explanation:

To calculate the volume of the brass cylinder, we use the formula for density, \(\rho = \frac{m}{V}\), where \(\rho\) is the density, \(m\) is the mass, and \(V\) is the volume. Given that the mass \(m\) is 3.21 kg (or 3210 g, since density is given in g/cm³) and the density \(\rho\) is 8.38 g/cm³, the volume \(V\) of the cylinder can be calculated as follows:

\(V = \frac{m}{\rho} = \frac{3210 \, g}{8.38 \, g/cm^3} = 383.05 \, cm^3\).

To calculate the tension in the string when the cylinder is submerged in water, we first need to determine the apparent weight loss of the cylinder, which equals the weight of the water displaced. Since the volume of the cylinder is 383.05 cm³, it will displace the same volume of water when fully submerged. The mass of the water displaced is equal to its volume multiplied by its density (which is 1.00 g/cm³). Thus, the tension in the string is equal to the actual weight of the brass cylinder in air minus the weight of the water displaced.

The weight of the brass cylinder in air is \(m_{brass} \cdot g = 3210 \, g \cdot 9.81 \, m/s^2 = 31.48 \, N\) (converting grams to kilograms by dividing by 1000).

The weight of the water displaced is \(m_{water} \cdot g = V_{water} \cdot \rho_{water} \cdot g = 383.05 \, cm^3 \cdot 1.00 \, g/cm^3 \cdot 9.81 \, m/s^2 = 3.76 \, N\) (again, converting grams to kilograms).

The tension in the string, which is the apparent weight of the submerged cylinder, can now be calculated as \(T = m_{brass} \cdot g - m_{water} \cdot g = 31.48 \, N - 3.76 \, N = 27.72 \, N\).

So the volume of the cylinder is 383.05 cm³ and the tension in the string when submerged is 27.72 N.

User Beep
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