Lab 1A: Density Block Lab

Introduction
My partner, Luis, and I calculated the mass and compared it to the mass of the actual mass of the block. From this we calculated the percent error((actual-experiment)/actual x 100%)). Percent error shows you how precise your result is compared with the actual "result". The purpose of this lab was to determine the mass of a plastic block using its density and volume. Density is the result of the mass of an object(amount of matter in an object) divided by the volume of the object (how much space it takes up).

Procedure
My partner and I selected different density blocks and then measured the length, width, and height to find the volume. After figuring out the volume, we multiplied it by the density of the block (which was given on the density block) to figure out the mass of the block. Then, we weighed the block to figure out the actual mass and then calculated the percent error. We went through 5 trials to get our lowest percent error. The important materials needed for this lab was a plastic block, weighing scale, ruler, pen, and paper.

Data
Our lowest percent error was 2.84%. For this block we found that the length of the block was 7.3 cm, the width being 3.3 cm, and the height being 2.4 cm. From this the volume was 57.816 cm^3. The density, given on the block, was 1.42 g/cm^3. Hence, our calculated mass was 82.1 g and the actual mass was 84.5 g. The percent error for this trial was 2.84%.

Conclusion
We partially fulfilled our purpose of the lab as our calculated mass  We determined the mass of a plastic block by figuring out the volume and using the density given. The reason why our percent errors were very high on many of our trials was maybe because we were a little off when measuring the length, width, and height of the block. I learned that accuracy plays a very big part in measurements, as even if we were a little off in our measurements, we had a magnificent difference between the actual and calculated mass of the block. In the future, I will make sure to make more accurate measurements.