Module 1

LESSON
1
Units, Density and
Concentration

Objectives:
At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

• Use different units of measurements.

• Calculate density and concentration using a standard unit
of measurement.

Introduction:
Welcome to the first lesson of module 1 of the subject ‘Applied Physics’.
This lesson will introduce you to the different units of measurements. Thse
units are important in understanding the measurements in the physical
world.

Activity:
Set A Set B

You have a kilo of each of You have a kilo of each of

the following: butter, oil, the following: butter, oil,
salt, baking powder, all salt, baking powder, all
purpose flour, vanilla, eggs, purpose flour, vanilla, eggs,
sugar milk. Together with sugar milk. And without
all of the measuring tools any measuring tool for
for baking you are to baking, you are going to
prepare to make a cake bake a cake

Prepare the materials above if you may.

Analysis:

After conducting the activity above. Answer the following question.

How do baking measuring tools play an important role in baking?
Why does different units of measurement important in baking?

Use the provided space below for your short answer.

 Abstraction:

Systems of units are created from a small number of fundamental units, which are
defined by accurate and precise measurements of conventionally chosen base
quantities. Two commonly used systems of units are English units and SI units. SI units
are a metric system of units, meaning values can be calculated by factors of 10. The SI
base units of length, mass, and time are the meter (m), kilogram (kg), and second (s),
respectively. Typically, the goal is to choose physical quantities that can be measured
accurately to a high precision as the base quantities. The reason for this is simple.
Since the derived units can be expressed as algebraic combinations of the base units,
they can only be as accurate and precise as the base units from which they are derive

Table 1 International System of Quantities

You are probably familiar with some derived quantities that can be formed from the
base quantities in Table 1. For example, the geometric concept of area is always
calculated as the product of two lengths. Thus, area is a derived quantity that can be
expressed in terms of SI base units using square meters (m x m = m 2). Similarly, volume
is a derived quantity that can be expressed in cubic meters (m 3). Speed is length per
time; so in terms of SI base units, we could measure it in meters per second (m/s).
Volume mass density (or just density) is mass per volume, which is expressed in terms
of SI base units such as kilograms per cubic meter (kg/m3). Angles can also be thought
of as derived quantities because they can be defined as the ratio of the arc length
subtended by two radii of a circle to the radius of the circle. This is how the radian is
defined. Depending on your background and interests, you may be able to come up
with other derived quantities, such as the mass flow rate (kg/s) or volume flow rate
(m3/s) of a fluid, electric charge (A • s), mass flux density [kg/(m 2 • s)], and so on. We
will see many more examples throughout this lesson. For now, the point is that every
physical quantity can be derived from the seven base quantities in Table 1 , and the
units of every physical quantity can be derived from the seven SI base units.

For the most part, we use SI units in this lesson. Non-SI units are used in a few
applications in which they are in very common use, such as the measurement of
temperature in degrees Celsius (°C), the measurement of fluid volume in liters (L), and
the measurement of energies of elementary particles in electron-volts (eV). Whenever
non-SI units are discussed, they are tied to SI units through conversions. For example,
1 L is 10−3 m3.

The SI unit for time, the second (abbreviated s), has a long history. For many years it
was defined as 1/86,400 of a mean solar day. More recently, a new standard was
adopted to gain greater accuracy and to define the second in terms of a non-varying
or constant physical phenomenon (because the solar day is getting longer as a result
of the very gradual slowing of Earth’s rotation). Cesium atoms can be made to vibrate
in a very steady way, and these vibrations can be readily observed and counted. In
1967, the second was redefined as the time required for 9,192,631,770 of these
vibrations to occur.

The SI unit for length is the meter (abbreviated m); its definition has also changed over
time to become more precise. The meter was first defined in 1791 as 1/10,000,000 of
the distance from the equator to the North Pole. This measurement was improved in
1889 by redefining the meter to be the distance between two engraved lines on a
platinum–iridium bar now kept near Paris. By 1960, it had become possible to define
the meter even more accurately in terms of the wavelength of light, so it was again
redefined as 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of orange light emitted by krypton atoms. In
1983, the meter was given its current definition (in part for greater accuracy) as the
distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second (Figure 1.3.3 ). This
change came after knowing the speed of light to be exactly 299,792,458 m/s. The
length of the meter will change if the speed of light is someday measured with greater
accuracy.

The SI unit for mass is the kilogram (abbreviated kg); From 1795–2018 it was defined
to be the mass of a platinum–iridium cylinder kept with the old meter standard at the
International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris. However, this cylinder has
lost roughly 50 micrograms since it was created. Because this is the standard, this has
shifted how we defined a kilogram. Therefore, a new definition was adopted in May
2019 based on the Planck constant and other constants which will never change in
value. We will study Planck’s constant in quantum mechanics, which is an area of
physics that describes how the smallest pieces of the universe work. The kilogram is
measured on a Kibble balance. When a weight is placed on a Kibble balance, an
electrical current is produced that is proportional to Planck’s constant. Since Planck’s
constant is defined, the exact current measurements in the balance define the
kilogram.

SI units are part of the metric system, which is convenient for scientific and
engineering calculations because the units are categorized by factors of 10. Table 2
lists the metric prefixes and symbols used to denote various factors of 10 in SI units.
For example, a centimeter is one-hundredth of a meter (in symbols, 1cm = 10–2 m) and
a kilometer is a thousand meters (1 km = 103 m). Similarly, a megagram is a million
grams (1 Mg = 106 g), a nanosecond is a billionth of a second (1 ns = 10–9 s), and a
terameter is a trillion meters (1 Tm = 1012 m).

Table 2 Metric Prefixes for Powers of 10 and Their Symbols

Density and Concentration

Most of us have long understood that "oil is lighter than water", or that iron is
"heavier" than sugar. But in making such statements, we are implicitly comparing
equal volumes of these substances. Mass and volume are measures of the quantity of
a substance, and as such are defined as extensive properties of matter. The ratio of
two extensive properties is always an intensive property — one that characterizes a
particular kind of matter, independently of its size or mass. It is this ratio, (mass ÷
volume), that we are concerned with in this lesson.

Denoting mass and volume by m and V respectively, we can write the equation of
each line as m=ρV , where the slope ρ (Greek lower-case rho) is the proportionality
constant that relates mass to volume. This quantity ρ is known as the density, which
is usually defined as the mass per unit volume. The general meaning of density is the
amount of anything per unit volume. What we conventionally call the "density" is
more precisely known as the "mass density". Density can be expressed in any
combination of mass and volume units; the most commonly seen units are grams per
mL (g mL–1, g cm–3), or kilograms per liter. (1 kg.m–3 = 10–3 g L–1 = 62.4 lb ft–3 ). The
same definition is valid for solid, liquid, gaseous and disperse systems like foams, bulk
goods or powders. The reciprocal of density is called specific volume and the units are
m3 · kg−1 .
For example, aluminum has a density of 2.70 g/cm 3, and lead has a density of 11.3
g/cm3. Therefore, a piece of aluminum of volume 10.0 cm 3 has a mass of 27.0 g,
whereas an equivalent volume of lead has a mass of 113 g. The difference in density
between aluminum and lead is due, in part, to their different atomic masses. The
atomic mass of an element is the average mass of one atom in a sample of the element
that contains all the element’s isotopes, where the relative amounts of isotopes are
the same as the relative amounts found in nature. The unit for atomic mass is the
atomic mass unit (u), where 1 u = 1.660 540 2 x 10-27 kg. The atomic mass of lead is
207 u, and that of aluminum is 27.0 u.
One mole (mol) of a substance is that amount of the substance that contains as many
particles (atoms, molecules, or other particles) as there are atoms in 12 g of the
carbon-12 isotope. One mole of substance A contains the same number of particles as
there are in 1 mol of any other substance B. For example, 1 mol of aluminum contains
the same number of atoms as 1 mol of lead. This number is known as Avogadro’s
number, NA = 6.022 x 1023 particles/mol. Avogadro’s number is defined so that 1 mol
of carbon-12 atoms has a mass of exactly 12 g. In general, the mass in 1 mol of any
element is the element’s atomic mass expressed in grams. For example, 1 mol of iron
(atomic mass = 55.85 u) has a mass of 55.85 g (we say its molar mass is 55.85 g/mol),
and 1 mol of lead (atomic mass = 207 u) has a mass of 207 g (its molar mass is 207
g/mol). Because there are 6.02 x 1023 particles in 1 mol of any element, the mass per
atom for a given element is
Mass atom = molar mass / NA

Concentration on the other hand is reported on a mass-to-mass (m/m) basis or on a

mass-to-volume (m/v) basis, particularly in clinical laboratories and engineering
applications. A concentration expressed on an m/m basis is equal to the number of
grams of solute per gram of solution; a concentration on an m/v basis is the number
of grams of solute per milliliter of solution. Each measurement can be expressed as a
percentage by multiplying the ratio by 100; the result is reported as percent m/m or
percent m/v. The concentrations of very dilute solutions are often expressed in parts
per million (ppm), which is grams of solute per 106 g of solution, or in parts per billion
(ppb), which is grams of solute per 109 g of solution.

The most common unit of concentration is molarity, which is also the most useful for
calculations involving the stoichiometry of reactions in solution. The molarity (M) is
defined as the number of moles of solute present in exactly 1 L of solution. It is,
equivalently, the number of millimoles of solute present in exactly 1 mL of solution:
The units of molarity are therefore moles per liter of solution (mol/L), abbreviated as
M . An aqueous solution that contains 1 mol (342 g) of sucrose in enough water to give
a final volume of 1.00 L has a sucrose concentration of 1.00 mol/L or 1.00 M.

Try to analyze the following situation. A solution contains 10.0 g of cobalt(II) chloride
dihydrate, CoCl2•2H2O, is in enough ethanol to make exactly 500 mL of solution. What
is the molar concentration of CoCl2∙2H2O?
What we know are the mass of solute and the volume of the solution, but what is
required is the molarity (M) which is the molar concentration. Remember that M=
moles of solute/liters of solution. This will tell you that you need the number of moles
of CoCl2∙2H2O and you know that it’s molar mass is 165.87 g/mol.
Show your approach here:

Now that you have 0.0603 mol, you can now proceed to your molarity equation.
Show your approach here:

And so, the molar concentration of CoCl2∙2H2O is 0.121 M.

Application:

Aluminum has a molar mass of 27 g/mol. Now, solid cube of aluminum

(density 2.7 g/cm3) has a volume of 0.38 cm3. How many aluminum atoms
are contained in the cube?
Show your complete approach to this inquiry on the space below.
Assessment:
A solid cube with a mass of 945 g has an edge length of 12.5 cm.
Determine the density of the cube using the basic SI units ( meter for
length; kilogram for mass). Use the space below for your step by step
solution.