Letter 38044

Weight of pure nickel and pure silver (PLZ HURRY!)  

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i am stuck on this lab writeup I need to research the weight of pure nickel and silver and i can't find them anywhere! if I dont turn this is I get my third fail and they kick me outta class! my mom would slaughter me plzplzplz if you can get this info plz post it here

John H
desperate student - Richmond, VA

Here's the thing, John, we're happy to help when help is needed, but teachers write to us and ask us to please tell the students to do their own homework. Your school librarian or your public librarian would be happy to show you where to find this info, and similar info, in under 5 minutes. Everyone is disserved -- mostly you, but also us taxpayers -- if we just give you a contextless answer, a arbitrary string of numbers, from which you will learn and remember absolutely nothing. When the librarian hands you the book, look up the definitions of 'weight' and 'density' too. Good luck.

Ted Mooney, P.E.  finishing.com Brick, New Jersey

Dear Desperate John,

The mentor of finishing.com ...Ted Mooney ... was dead right. You are damned lazy.

If you hit GOOGLE and wrote down 'weights of metals' you'd soon find some answers much faster than going to this site.

This has to do with specific gravity. Lesson # 1. A cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 lbs # 2 The specific gravity of water is 1. Ergo, if the sg of a substance is, say, 2 ... then 2 x 62.4 will give you the weight of a cubic foot of that substance. NOW B...... WELL MEMORIZE THAT. OK !

I would not have been so polite as Ted ...

Freeman Newton - White Rock, B.C. Canada

John, you clearly have access to the Internet, so you can easily find the answer to your problem. However, nickel and silver can weigh as much as you want them to - it all depends on how much you have of them! To compare their "weights" you need to know their densities. Now, as a bit of extra homework, tell us the relationship between weight (or mass) and density.....Then we will know that you haven't just used us a way of getting your homework done on the cheap.

Trevor Crichton R&D practical scientist - UK

I never could figure out which weighed more, a lb of silver or a lb of nickel....

Sheldon Taylor    supply chain electronics Wake Forest, No. Carolina

The weights of objects are directly proportional to how much it would hurt to get hit in the head by a pound of them, Sheldon -- which explains the well known fact that a pound of lead is much heavier than a pound of feathers. So there isn't an awful lot of difference in the weight of a pound of silver and a pound of nickel; in fact, allowing for roundoff error, John H could probably go so far as to claim they weighed the same without risk of demerits :-)

Ted Mooney finishing.com Brick, New Jersey

You know, the real reason we can't answer the original question is that "Desperate John" didn't specify what planet (or other location) he's on! Weight depends upon local gravity (as opposed to mass).

James Totter, CEF - Tallahassee, Florida

silver-107.87
nickel-58.69

Jason Brown
- Athens, PA, USA

Thanks for the atomic weights, Jason. But is there a workable relationship between density and atomic weight?

Ted Mooney finishing.com Brick, New Jersey

Well, it turned into an interesting thread to read, but a pointless one because the original poster gave no indication whether he was thinking of atomic weight or density. An ambiguous question attracts ambiguous answers.

Bill Reynolds    consultant metallurgist Ballarat, Victoria, Australia

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