Lab 1B: Aluminum Foil Lab

Lab 1B: Aluminum Foil Lab Part II

Introduction: The purpose of the aluminum foil lab was to determine the thickness of a piece of aluminum foil. While conducting the experiment our lab group had to find the mass and volume of an aluminum cylinder in part I of the lab to determine the density of the material. This information would be a critical part of finding the required information regarding the foil. The next step was to measure the mass of the foil using a scale, and after possessing that information our team could find the volume of the foil by using the formula: volume equals mass divided by density or v=m/d. Then we could measure the length and width of the foil, and to find the height we could use the formula: height equals volume over length times width or h=v/l*w. This would give us the thickness of the aluminum foil.

Procedure: The materials that were crucial to the experiment were an aluminum foil, a ruler, a graduated cylinder, and a scale. The first step in order to derive the thickness was to establish the density of the foil. We did this using a aluminum cylinder in part one. We measured the cylinder on the scale and found that the mass was 105.3 grams. The next step was to find the volume of it so we displaced it in a graduated cylinder and our measurement for the volume was 38.0 milliliters. Using the formula d=m/v we could calculate that the density of the aluminum cylinder was 2.77 g/cm^3. Now that we knew the density we could precede to find the mass of the foil by using the scale, and we found that the mass was 0.41 grams. Now we could finally find the volume of the foil and by dividing the mass by the density we found that the volume was 0.15cm^3. Using our rulers, the next step was to measure the length and width of the foil. The length was 10.0 centimeters and the width was 9.55 centimeters. The final step was to substitute this information into the formula h=v/l*w to find that the thickness of the foil was 0.016 milliliters.

Data: The data for this experiment consisted of mainly the mass, volume, and density of the aluminum cylinder which was 105.3 grams, 38.0 milliliters, and 2.77 g/cm^3 respectively. The data for the aluminum foil was comprised of the length of 10.0 centimeters, the width of 9.55 centimeters, the mass of 0.41 grams, and the density of 2.77 g/cm^3.

Conclusion: In conclusion, the purpose of the lab to determine the thickness of a piece of aluminum foil was accomplished in one trial. There were no errors that had a noticeable outcome on the experiment, and if there were any errors they most likely were caused by measuring errors and significant figure errors. Our team learned that precision is required when measuring objects and that significant figures should always be checked. Our team also was reminded to properly clean up any materials left over and the workspace. For future labs similar to this one, changes I would make to improve the results would be to double check measurements and significant figures