Lab 2: Aluminum Foil Lab

Procedure: This lab tasked us with determining the thickness of a "square" piece of aluminum foil in millimeters. We were given the density and we were given a ruler, but nothing else. Our first step was to use the ruler to measure our piece of aluminum foil. The length and width respectively were 11.30 cm and 10.10 cm. We then weighed the aluminum foil on the balance to find its mass, which was 0.50 g. With this value, we could solve for volume using the formula for density: D = M/V. This equation also meant that volume was mass divided by density. By plugging in the values we already had, we found that the volume was 0.19 cm^3. We were also given the formula for volume, which was V= L x H x W. As the first thing we did was measure the length and width, we could plug in values for every variable except for H, the height, which was what we were looking for. We solved this equation to get a height, or thickness, of 0.002 cm. We converted this number into millimeters, resulting in a final answer of 0.02 mm.