This isn't much - really it is part of another post I am working on. The point of this post is to calculate the density of this piece of wood.
Really, there is a reason for this. I saw this little stick (sticklette?) and noticed that it was very cylindrically shaped. So, what if I just pretend it is a cylinder to calculate the volume? This way I won't have to get it wet or anything (because I might need this stick later).
First the mass
Yes, there is some uncertainty in the mass - but it is small. I put the stick on balance and I will use a value of m = 28.9 g or 0.0289 kg.
Volume
The volume of a cylinder is:
And from my estimates, I get a length and diameter of:
To determine the volume (and the uncertainty in the volume) I am going to use the "max-min" method for uncertainty. The basic idea is that I will calculate the maximum value the volume could be and the minimum and base the uncertainty on these.
And for the minimum volume:
Note: I put too many digits in these number because at this point, I don't know how many to keep. Now for the uncertainty in the volume, I will just take the average change from max to average and average to min:
Putting this all together, I get a volume of:
Density
Now to do the same thing with the density. The maximum density is:
Here I divided by the minimum volume to get the maximum density. And the min volume:
This gives a density of:
I am pretty happy with this. This density is less than water (1000 kg/m3) so that means this wood would float (along with very small rocks and gravy).
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Generally we calculate the specific gravity, dividing the density of the wood by the density of water, to yield a unitless value, which if less than 1 means the wood floats.
Twigs are trickier because you have both bark (phloem plus cork) and pith tissues which generally are less dense than xylem, so by using the whole twig's mass you under estimate the density of the wood. Also generally you dry out the wood in a warm oven (50 C) to remove any water present.
why not just submerge the piece of wood to figure out the volume?
@Sam,
This way was more fun and less messy.
Hmm, how do you get from the second Vmax of 3.972 to the Vmin of 4.9 you use in the density calculation?
cider!
What else floats aside com witches?
Which begs the question: "Can you determine the density of a witch?"
(even if it is a false nose?)
Churches!
ughhhh im just a kid how am i gunna no how 2 read this???
hi. density of wood (iron wood & box wood) ?thanks.
Why a piece of wood floats on water and needle sinks into the water even needle has less density