Sept-16-2014 Calculating Density and Error Analysis on Aluminum, Copper and Steel

Purpose:

This lab will teach students to perform error analysis on data gathered from experiments.

Lab:

Students were given three cylinders of different materials: Aluminum, Steel and Copper.

Students then used a caliper and mass scale to record the height, diameter and mass of the three cylinders.

A simple volume calculation was done to find volume and with the mass and the volume the students calculated the density of the cylinders with the equation d = m/v.  All of the data was written onto a whiteboard.

Then an error analysis was performed by taking into account the error of the mass scale which had an error of .01 grams and the caliper which had an error of .01 cm

The calculated density for the three materials aluminum, copper and steel along with their respected calculated errors were then compared with the textbook densities for the materials and it was found that the textbook densities were within the student's calculated error range.

Conclusion:

The students successfully calculated the density of the three materials with an error range that met the established 'actual' densities of the three materials.