Chapter 12, Problem 12.86P

DATA You have a bucket containing; in unknown liquid. You also have a cube-shaped wooden block that you measure to be 8.0 cm on a side, but you don’t know the mass or density of the block. To find the density of the liquid, you perform an experiment. First you place the wooden block in the liquid and measure the height of the top of the floating block above the liquid surface. Then you stack various numbers of U.S. quarter-dollar coins onto the block and measure the new value of h. The straight line that gives the best fit to the data you have collected is shown in Fig. P12.86. Find the mass of one quarter (sec www.usmint.gov for quarters dated 2012). Use this information and the slope and intercept of the straight-line fit to your data to calculate (a) the density of the liquid (in kg/m³) and (b) the mass of the block (in kg).