A mass of 182 g of benzene, an important organic solvent, fills a measuring cylinder to the 207 mL mark. How to calculate the density of benzene: (a) in #"g/ cm"^3#? (b) in #"kg/m"^3#?

1 Answer
Stefan V.
Feb 28, 2015

So, you have your mass of benzene and the volume it occupies. Density is defined as mass per unit of volume, which means you have all you need to solve for benzene's density.

#rho = m/V = "182 g"/"207 mL" = "0.879 g/mL"#

Now, the units you must use are grams per cubic centimeter and kg per cubic meter, which means you must set up a series of conversion factors.

#0.879"g"/"mL" * "1 mL"/("1 cm"^3) = "0.879 g/cm"^3#, and

#0.879"g"/"cm"^3 * (10^(6) "cm"^3)/("1 m"^3) * "1 kg"/(10^(3)"g") = "879 kg/m"^3#

Notice that I've used #"1 mL" = "1 cm"^3#, #"1 kg" = "1000 g"#, and #"1 m"^3 = "1,000,000 cm"^3#.

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