How do you calculate density of matter?

1 Answer
May 5, 2015

Density is defined as mass per volume-unit.

So you first need to know the mass of an object. You can do this by weighing it.

Then you want to know the volume . If your object is of a regular form, e.g. a block, you can calculate length x width x height. In other cases you can submerge the object in water (in a graduated cylinder) and note the difference in water level.

After that, it's: density=mass/volume, or ρ=mV

Extra:
Officially, density is expressed in the unit kg/m3, but as this would lead to high figures (water has ρ=1000kg/m3), often the density is expressed in kg/dm3org/cm3 (they have the same numerical value). So mercury would have an official density of 13.6103kg/m3 but usually this is just abbreviated to 13.6 (this is called relative density, water being 1)