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Measuring the Height
After 5-10 minutes, the airbag will no longer inflate and the height can be measured.
Place a flat, weighted object on top of the airbag and use a ruler to measure from the top of the table to the bottom of the weighted object.
Taking your measurement in centimeters will make unit conversion easier.
Record the following data in your lab notebook.
The height of the 1:1 airbag was measured at 1.41 cm.
The mass of the airbag was 2.448 g.
Calculating the Volume
For this experiment we will assume the airbag is a rectangular solid.
This means that we will simply multiply the length, width and height of the airbag to obtain the volume.
The length and width of the airbags are fixed and differ very little from one airbag to the next, so we will always use the following numbers,
Length: 10.18 cm
Width: 7.26 cm
The height will obviously vary from one airbag to the next depending on the modifications made to it.
It is often much more useful to record a volume in liters, L, than in cubic centimeters, cm3, so we convert to L for all of our volume measurements (1 mL = 1 cm3).
Calculate the volume of your 1:1 airbag and record the value in your lab notebook.
You will need to convert between cm3 and L (1 cm3 = 1 mL).
Calculate the volume to mass ratio in L/g and record this value in your lab notebook.
Was the experimentally measured value different than the theoretical value you calculated before? If so, why might they be different? (Hint: we assumed the bag was a cube.)
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