Calculate the mass in grams of an object

Question

Calculate the mass in grams of an object with a volume of 23.5 mL and density of 10.0 g/L

Answer 1

So the density is the ratio of mass to volume. It basically tells us how compact a substance is.

The density of an object can be used to convert the volume to mass and vice versa !

Since the density has the units g/L, it will be easiest to convert our volume of 23.5 mL to L to make the conversion easier!

23.5mL x (1L /1000 mL) = 0.0235 L

(Since 1 L = 1000 mL, remember mL stands for milli which is the prefix for 1000. And since we want to get rid of the mL units we need to be sure to have that on the denominator when multiply this fraction by our volume. This way with dimensional analysis the mL units will be cancelled out.)

Now we just multiply our volume in L by the density to get the grams:

0.0235 L x (10.0 g/L) = 0.235 g

(Again since we want to cancel out L we need to L to be denominator in conversion fraction we are multiplying by.)

So our final answer is that this object has a mass of 0.235 g

Hope this helps! :)