Final answer:
The density of mercury is converted from 13.6 g/mL to 29.98 lbs/L by first converting grams to kilograms, then milliliters to liters, and lastly kilograms to pounds using the conversion factor that 1 pound is equal to 0.454 kilograms.
Step-by-step explanation:
To convert the density of mercury from grams per milliliter (g/mL) to pounds per liter (lbs/L), we need to use the given conversion factor that 1 pound is equal to 0.454 kilograms. We know that mercury has a density of 13.6 g/mL, which means 13.6 grams is equivalent to 1 milliliter of mercury. To convert this to lbs/L, consider the following steps:
Convert grams to kilograms, knowing that there are 1,000 grams in a kilogram.
Since 1 mL is equivalent to 0.001 liters, we can scale up the density to that for 1 liter.
Finally, convert kilograms to pounds using the conversion factor.
Performing these steps:
13.6 g/mL × (1 kg / 1000 g) = 0.0136 kg/mL
0.0136 kg/mL × (1000 mL / 1 L) = 13.6 kg/L
13.6 kg/L × (2.20462 lbs / 1 kg) = 29.982272 lbs/L
Therefore, the density of mercury is approximately 29.98 lbs/L.