Question

The student then emptied the flask and dried it once again. To the empty flask, she added pieces of metal until the flask was about half full. She weighed the stoppered flask and the metal contents and found that the mass was 152.047 g. She then filled the flask with water, stopped it, and obtained a total mass of 165.541 g for the flask, stopper, metal, and water. Find the density of the metal. Find the density of the metal.

Answer 1

To find the metal's density, calculate the metal's mass by subtracting the flask's mass from the total mass and then determine its volume via water displacement. Finally, divide the mass by the volume to obtain the density.

Step-by-step explanation:

To find the density of the metal used in the experiment, we need to determine the mass and volume of just the metal. We have the total mass of the flask, stopper, metal, and water (165.541 g) and the total mass of the empty flask and stopper with the metal (152.047 g). Subtracting these two gives us the mass of the water alone. We know the density of water is 1.00 g/mL, so the mass of water added gives us the volume of the space the metal does not occupy in the flask. If we subtract the total volume of the flask (the volume when filled only with water) from the volume of the water that was added with the metal present, we will get the volume of the metal.

Once the volume of the metal is determined, density can be calculated using the formula density = mass / volume.

The calculated density can then be compared to known densities to hypothesize the type of metal used.