Link to lesson plan for measuring densities.
Density is a property of materials which can be vital in determining an unknown material. This is because each material has its own unique density value.
Density is defined as the amount of mass packed into a given volume of space, or Density = Mass/Volume, D = M/V. This is therefore a relatively easy value to determine in the laboratory, if one has a balance or scale to measure mass, and containers such as beakers or graduated cylinders for measuring the volume of displaced water when an object is put into the water. Here is an example of a table of elements, arranged from lowest density to highest density. Here is a extensive list of densities for different materials.
It can be fun to have students to take some small number of objects, determine their densities, and then find the closest match on these lists to see if they can identify what the object of made of!
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