Found This The Other Night, Not Sure What It Is

[kac]

It rang in like between silver and copper. I can see some iron oxide in it but not quite enough for a magnet to stick to it. Tossed it in a graduated cup with 500ml of water and it displaced 10ml. Weight is 102g, unusually heavy. So if my cruddy maths are right is has a density of 10.2g? Seems to have some quarts in it as well but not sure.

 

[Lunk]

Silver has a density of 10.5 grams per cubic centimeter.

[kac]

Thanks,

The density could be different, the graduation lines where pretty far apart so I did a guestimate on the displacement. Good possibility it is less.

[GB_Amateur]

1 hour ago, kac said:

The density could be different, the graduation lines where pretty far apart so I did a guestimate on the displacement. Good possibility it is less.

Glad you pointed that out.  Measuring volumes is rather in-exact.  Much better is using Archimedes Principle but even then you need a scale which is quite sensitive relative to the weight of the object whose density (or specific gravity) is being determined.

Many common elements and alloys fall in the ~8-9 region of specific gravity so a 10% error in your measurement value of 10 could mean your find is among those.

[kac]

I need a graduated beaker that has finer lines on it. I'm probably not that far off though, this rock is unusally heavy. I don't think we have silver ore in my neck of the woods and thinking it could be a piece of meteorite maybe a chondrite.

[kac]

So been thinking... rather than farting around with beakers etc. I am going to try some 3d scanning software that uses my dslr. If I can generate an stl or obj file I can correct it's dimensions in my cad software and put in the weight which will give me the density with a great deal of accuracy. I'm sure there are other ways but this sounds more fun. 🙂