What is Density?
Density is how much stuff there is in some amount of space. It s typically measured as how much mass (which is a bit like how much it weighs) there is in so much space. (For example, scientists often measure it as how many grams per cubic centimeter.) Let s say that we had two balls, a basketball and a bowling ball, and both are the same size. Since the bowling ball is heavier than the basketball, you know that it has to be more dense, since they both take up the same amount of space overall. Another example to think of is if you ve ever baked a cake and had to sift the flour. The reason for sifting the flour is to make it less dense, so the cake won t be as heavy. Before you sift it, it s very dense, because the flour is all packed together. Afterwards, it s very loose and takes up more space. So a cup of sifted flour weighs less than a cup of unsifted flour since it s denser. Hope this helps!
As a child I wondered; “How can something made of steel float?” The answer, once I understood it, made me wonder why it took so long to make steel boats. Everyone knows that steel is “heavier” than water and that is why it sinks. So as a kid the first thing I wondered about navy ships was; why were they able to float if they were made of steel? The explanation of why steel ships float has to do with “specific gravity” and “density”. The density of something is the mass of the object divided by the volume or the space it takes up. Specific gravity is the comparison of the density of an object to a standard density. In most cases this standard density is the density of water which is defined as 1.0. For example if you read tables of specific gravity Material Specific Gravity Barite 4.25 Bentonite 2.4 Calcium Carbonate 2.7 Cement 3.0 Clays 2.6 Diesel Oil 0.84 Dolomite 2.9 Fresh Water 1.0 Galena 6.5 Gypsum 2.3 Iron/Steel 7.8 Iron Oxide 5.1 Lead 11.4 Limestone 2.8 Salt 2.2 Sand 2.6 Air (dry
Density is a property of matter that is unique to each substance. It is a measure of the mass of the substance in a standard unit of volume. Triple Beam Balance Sometimes density is easy to sense. If two objects have exactly the same size and shape, the denser one may feel heavier. But if their densities are very close together, it will be hard to tell a difference. It gets really tough if you are dealing with materials that have very different sizes and/or very different shapes. The only way to decide the density of a substance is to measure its mass and its volume, then divide.
