Question

on General Physics Lab (Measurement)

Explain the water immersion method and compare them with the volume computed from the dimensions of the cylinder.

Mention which method is more precise.

Answer 1

Water immersion method - This method is used to measure the volume of an irregular shaped object. To find the volume, an irregular shaped object is placed inside a graduated cylinder and then a new reading is taken from the scale of the cylinder.

Then, change in volume is calculated as

Change in volume = final volume level in cylinder - initial volume level in cylinder (before putting in the object)

This change in volume will give us the volume of the object.

Accuracy

If we want to measure the volume of a regular shaped object like a cylinder, spherical, cube etc then we can easily do that by using physical dimensions. This will be more accurate. However, in case of irregular shaped objects, finding physical dimensions is difficult and has a lot of uncertainty.