Lab 1B: Aluminum Foil Lab

Introduction: The purpose of this lab was to find out how thick any piece of aluminum foil would be when given a piece of aluminum foil and some solid aluminum formed in a single shape. It also served another purpose, which was how to apply the formulas we had learned, and use them to find out other values.

Procedure: To start out, my partner and I had to find out the density of aluminum so we could apply it to the piece of aluminum foil. In order to do that, we needed to find the mass and volume of the aluminum we had. In order to find the mass, we just weighed it on a scale and got a mass of 14.95 grams, and for the volume, we used the water displacement method. The water displacement method is where you fill a cylinder up to wherever you want (just not to the absolute top), drop the thing that you're trying to find the volume of into the water, and subtract the original water volume from the water volume with the object in it. Using this method, we were able to get a volume of 5.4 milliliters. And as 14.95/5.4=2.8, the density of the aluminum is 2.8 g/cm^3. Using the density, we were then able to find the thickness of the aluminum foil. To delve deeper, we developed a formula based on the results we grabbed earlier. Since we were able to find two (non-thickness) related dimensions of the aluminum foil, which were 11.11cm and 12.00cm, and the mass of the sheet of aluminum foil, which was 0.60 g, we had all the requirements in place in order to find the thickness of the sheet. Since D=M/V, we just plugged in the values to get an equation of 2.8=0.60/11.11*12.00*h. In order to get h isolated from the rest of the formula, we just multiplied both sides by h and divided both sides by 2.8 to get h=0.60/11.11*12.00*2.8.

Data: The found thickness of the sheet of aluminum foil was 0.016 mm.

Conclusion: In the end, the purpose of the lab was fulfilled, as my partner and I both found the thickness of the aluminum foil and were able to manipulate a common formula to our needs. I learned that if we do need to find some variables in one problem, but they aren't necessarily all provided, we can just find the values we need in one problem by doing another, granted that the other problem has the same values as the first. I feel that something that may have gone wrong during the lab would be the density of the aluminum, as we only tested one sample of the solid aluminum. So, as a result, I would test multiple pieces of aluminum to make sure that the density is in fact the correct density if I were to do this lab again in the future.