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St.

Mary's School Chemistry Lab Fernando Zhu Yu Cesar Lee Humberto Ng Robin Ahir Sofia Moncada Teacher Anaika Guerra Grade 10-4 Date September 3rd , 2013 Introduction
In this laboratory experiment we used different pennies from different years with different density. We are also trying to find the probability of errors

and how bad the accuracy and precision the answers could be when it's done once, that's why we will repeat the experiments several times. We will be using pennies from before the 1982 and pennies after 1982 to see the difference in mass, volume and density.

Experiment Results

Pennies after 1982


Trial #1 Trial #2 Mass 105,3g 111g Volume 14mL 15mL Density: 7,657 g/mL Error Percentage: 13,97% Trial #3 105,3g 14mL Average 107,2g 14mL

Pennies before 1982


Trial #1 Trial #2 Mass 121,8g 121,3g Volume 15mL 14mL Density: 8,1 g/mL Error Percentage: 9,0% Trial #3 121,4g 15mL Average 121,5g 15mL

Discussion
1.Why is it best to use the results of three trials rather than a single trial for determining density?
Because having several trials can be used to make comparisons between them, having an average of three trials can reduce the probability of using a wrong answer to determine the density.

2.How did the densities of the two groups of pennies compare? How do you account for any differences?
The difference between both groups' density was 0.44 g/mL. The difference can be found by subtracting both density, they had a difference since one is denser than the other, we could observe this when we were doing our experiments, a group would weigh more than the other.

3.Use the results of this investigation to formulate a hypothesis about the composition of the two groups of pennies. How could you test your hypothesis?
Our hypothesis would be that the before 1982's group is denser than the after 1982's group because there's more copper in the pennies from the years before 1982, we could prove our hypothesis by measuring and comparing the density of copper with the density of the pennies.

Conclusion
We've concluded that the experiments must be done more than once to make sure the accuracy and the precision of the answer is as high as possible, we also concluded that the pennies before 1982 are denser and closer to the density of copper. Why? How? Our experiments showed that the our pennies before 1982 have a 9,0% of error, and the pennies after 1982 have a 13,97% of error, this shows that the pennies from before 1982 are denser and closer to the true value of copper than the pennies after 1982.

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