This lab will help students understand the relationship between the isotopic abundance of an element’s isotopes and the relative atomic mass of the element. All Canadian pennies have a monetary value of one cent. However pennies have different masses because the composition has changed over the years. Students can think of these different pennies as "isotopes" ofthe penny. In this lab students will have to determine the relative abundance of the penny isotopes in their sample and then combine this with their passes to calculate the average "atomic" mass of the penny.
A teacher at Highland Secondary School in the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board has developed a lab handout including a procedure, observations, analysis questions and discussion questions. This lab handout can be found here.
This lab can be collected and used as either a formative or summative assessment for the students.
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Figure B.15: Pile of Pennies