Students will work in pairs to determine the density of several small regular and irregular objects by measuring the mass and volume of each object.
Note that regular objects require the measurements of the length, width, and height (or thickness) of each object and multiplied by each other, in contrast to irregular objects that require the process of water displacement, whereby the initial water level is read and recorded, and the object is then gently lowered into the measuring tool such as a beaker or a graduated cylinder, and the new water level is read and recorded. Then the difference between the initial and final water reading gives us the volume of that irregular object.
To calculate the density of that object, the mass of the object is divided by its volume. The answer for the density of the object needs to be expressed in terms of g/cm3 or g/ml, since the mass of small objects is measured in grams (g), and the volume of small objects is measured in cm3 or ml.