Blog #1

Blog Post #1

The main ideas that we have been learning about are mass, volume, significant figures, and density.  These main ideas all link together when we are taking measurements of certain things, such as a prism or other objects.  The big thing in significant figures, that we focused on, was determining whether or not certain values, mostly zeros, should be included in the measurement.  Also, for density, we emphasized the relationship between mass and volume in order to find the density, and that the density of an object represents a slope on a graph comparing mass and volume.
Here is a graph of the density of water.

An experiment we did relating to mass was when we simply found the mass of different objects to see if we could change it.  But we later found out that, due to the Law of Conservation of Matter, we cannot create or destroy matter, thus we could not change the mass of those items unless we made a chemical change.  When we were investigating volume, we would find the volume of an object two different ways, one was water displacement, and the other was by using centimeters and equations.  We then discovered that the relationship between these two units of volume should be equivalent.  We found out all our answers by discussing with each other, doing our experiments, and simply using logic and past knowledge to comprehend these new ideas.
One question that I had (but figured out later) was:

1. How can you graph the density of an object if you only have the density value, but not either of the mass or volume values?

I feel that my participation this week was very good because I have been learning a lot of new stuff that I had never even heard/learned about before.  I would rate my understanding of all the material that we have learned at a 9.5/10 because I am pretty sure I know everything, but there is a very little part of me that has some doubt.  I feel about 100% confident about everything, but if I had to review something, it would probably be in determining which zeros are significant in measurements.

This is a good diagram for significant figures.

I have some new things to think about relating to volume, significant figures, and density.  For volume, I did not know that if the volume measurement for an object is 8 cm^3, then it is also 8 mL.  For the significant figures, I need to start thinking about which zeros are significant and which aren't because I get tripped up on that sometimes.  For density, I have to remember that density is mass divided by volume, and that it is the slope of an equation relating to a graph with volume and mass as the axes.