A physicist makes a cup of instant coffee and notices that as the coffee cools from 95.5 °C to 42 °C its level drops 3.1 mm in her 12.5-cm-diameter cup. Let's explore this situation assuming the coffee has a volumetric coefficient of thermal expansion of 5.0 × 10-4/°C. a. If the initial volume of the coffee was 350 cm3, show that the observed decrease cannot simply be explained by thermal contraction by determining the expected decrease in height due to thermal contraction. Give your answer in millimeters. (In the end, it turns out that most of the drop in the coffee's level is due to escaping bubbles of air.)

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A physicist makes a cup of instant coffee and notices that as the coffee cools from 95.5 °C to 42 °C its level drops 3.1 mm in her 12.5-cm-diameter cup. Let's explore this situation assuming the coffee has a volumetric coefficient of thermal expansion of 5.0 × 10-4/°C.

a. If the initial volume of the coffee was 350 cm3, show that the observed decrease cannot simply be explained by thermal contraction by determining the expected decrease in height due to thermal contraction. Give your answer in millimeters. (In the end, it turns out that most of the drop in the coffee's level is due to escaping bubbles of air.) 

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