Definition OF A BODY DENSITY

AIM: To calculate the density of a body and errors of direct and indirect measurements.

INSTRUMENTS: Vernier callipers, parallelepiped.

System International units

A system of units, known as the System International (SI) units, is now used for all branches of physics. It is based on the meter as the unit of length, the kilogram as the unit of mass, the second as the unit of time, the ampere as the unit of electric current and the Kelvin as the unit of temperature. The unit of force in this system is the Newton and the unit of energy is the Joule.

For many years the meter (m) was taken as the distance between two lines on a particular platinum-iridium rod at 00 C kept near Paris. It is now defined as the length of a certain number of wavelengths in a vacuum of a particular orange radiation of the krypton-86 atom. Unlike the distance between the marks on the rod, the wavelength of the radiation from an atom is a constant.

By definition, 1 m = 1 650 763.73 wavelengths of the above radiation.

The kilogram (kg) is the mass of a particular solid cylinder made of platinum-iridium alloy kept in Paris, known as the International Prototype Kilogram.

In practice, the following smaller units may also be used. The millimeter (mm), which is 1/1000 m. The centimeter (cm), which is 1/100 m The gram (g), which is 1/1000 kg. The second (s) was formerly 1/86 400 th part of a mean solar day. This unit, used by astronomers, has now been replaced by an atomic unit. Atomic clocks are now used as standard clocks. Clock which measured the period of rotation of the earth to an exceptionally high order of accuracy and this showed clearly the irregularity in the rate of rotation of the earth. Cesium or atomic clocks are now used as standard clocks. The second is defined as the time for 9 192 631 770 cycles of vibration of a particular radiation from the caesium-133 atom.

The mass per unit of volume of a substance is called its density:

(4.1).

where m is the mass of the body and V is its volume. The volume of a parallelepiped equals to:

(4.2).

where a, b, c are the width, the length and the height of the body. The volume of cylinder equals to:

(4.3).

where d is the diameter of base of a cylinder; h is the altitude of a cylinder. Thus we can calculate the density of a parallelepiped with the formula:

(4.4).

Or the density of a cylinder with the formula:

(4.5).

where m is the given mass of the body.