Lab 1-2 Indirect measurement

Summary of the experiment:

In this Lab, we had to find to determine the thickness of  three different object : aluminum foil , heavy aluminum paper and a copper wire. We were asked to find our way to determine the thickness of the three objects. We used the formula D= m/v for each tests. We used the References table to find the density and the scale to determine the mass and we plug it the numbers. The thickness of the aluminum foil is less than the thickness of the heavy aluminum paper.

There are limitation when you use the ruler to calculate the thickness of something , with the ruler you can only measure the length and the width of something and you cant find the height that doesn't help much , and with the water displacement you can find the volume of things but sometimes its inaccurate.

Some sources of error can be if you didn't measure the width or length of the object right and another one is if you didn't plug it the number right into the formula. some people tend to do the math wrong that can explain the error in the diameter value.

One problem that i encounter while doing this experiment was i couldn't figure the height of the aluminum foil because the ruler couldn't measure it. To overcome that i used the formula D= m/v to figure out the volume of the aluminum foil when i found the volume i plugged it in the formula v=l.w.h, i already found  the length and the width of the aluminum foil i plugged it that too and put an x for h and i solved the problem and found the height.

Another Experiment you could use is gas mileage.  It's a good example because its like in the experiment, it's something that we can directly measure. However like in the lab we can use the values that we have to figure out the one that we don't have. The values we were able to figure out is how much gas you need and how many miles you can do with that gas.If you're keeping track of how many miles you go ,checked the odometer of your car and how many gas you used. You can divide the number of miles you drove by the number of gallons and you will figure out how many miles you get per gallon.

Mathematical way to figure out which foil gives more value i will first convert the amount of foil in a roll into cm .
Regular foil = 70 cm x 600 cm
Heavy duty  foil = 40 cm x 1500 cm
I will then multiply the amount of foil in roll times the thickness using the formula : v= l.w.h
- Regular foil : 70x600x0.0017 = 71.4 cm3
- Heavy duty foil: 40x1500x0.0023 =  138 cm3
Then use the Volume and divide it by the price
- Regular foil : 71.4  / 5.79 = 12.331
- Heavy duty : 138/ 3.79 = 36.411

The heavy duty gives us more value than the Regular foil.