Week 5 Reflection

While in chemistry class this week, one of our first topics of discussion related back to a previous experiment involving measuring the thickness of aluminum foil. The question asked was, "If regular aluminum foil is 0.0014 cm thick, how does the arrangement of heavy-duty particles (0.0022 cm) compare to those of the regualar?" If aluminum foil was one particle layer thick, that would then mean that the heavy-duty foil would be 1.5 particles thick. Unfortunately, you cannot have half a particle, as this theory was quickly shut down. Another thought was that maybe the particles were staggered, but that then revealed the fact that there would be empty and open spaces in the material. Then, the first idea was brought up again, but with a twist: it wasn't in its lowest whole number ratio. By multilpying each number by two, we were finally able to achieve an answer of a 2 particle layer: 3 particle layer ratio that everyone agreed upon. Through this consensus, we were able to establish the fact that you may have to manipulate the numbers to make them cope with reality.

Mr. Abud then introduced our latest experiment to us: we would be measuring the density of a student. In order to prepare for this, we needed a plan to help guide us through the process. As a group, everyone began to share their ideas with each other and how we were going to make this work. We eventually were able to settle upon using Thomas Goffas and Shannon McEnroe as our test subjects. The plan was to use the emergency shower to help us fill a 44-gallon trash can that was inside a kiddy pool. The shower head itself had a plastic shower curtain wrapped around it to prevent water from splashing out as the can was slowly filled. From there, we would have one of the testers slowly climb their way into the can so the water was able to displace into the kiddy pool surrounding it. We were then able to have people take empty jars, 2 liter pop bottles, and milk jugs to fish out spilled water out of the pool for further measurements. For those who didn't have 2 liter bottles, they were able to use a funnel to help pour water from other containers into the 2 liter bottles, for the shared a common measurement link the "grams for every milliliter" units we were using. After this, we recorded each person's mass and then coverted the mass from pounds to grams while also converting the calculated volume from liters to millilters. From this point, we were then able to use the gathered data on each students calculated volume and shared mass to help us fully conclude with what the density of a human was. Our final conclusion was that a person's density is solely dependent on their mass and volume. Those with more mass than volume will have a higher density than those with more volume than mass.