Answer to Question #184557 in General Chemistry for micheal

Question

You find a piece of metal in an old chest in your attic. It looks like gold, but it could be a cheap metal made to look like gold. You remember from your science class that gold has a high density of close to 20  g/cm3, and that gold is much denser than most other metals. You decide to carry out an experiment to measure the density of the piece of metal that you found; the mass of the metal is found to be 687 g and its volume is 54 cm3. Based on these measurements, is it likely that the metal you found is gold? Write a paragraph explaining how you arrive at your answer.

Answer 1

$p=\frac{m}{V}$

Where:

p = density

m = mass

V = volume

$p=\frac{687g}{54cm^3}= 12.7g/cm^3$

Based on the calculations done from the measurement collected on the experiment the this metal is likely to be gold since the density is close to 20g/cm³