A nugget of gold is placed in a graduated cylinder that contains 85 mL of water. The water level rises to 225 mL after the nugget is added to the cylinder. What is the volume of the gold nugget?

1 Answer
anor277
Jun 21, 2016

Well, the gold nugget displaces #(225-85)*mL# of water, so the difference is its volume.

Explanation:

A more interesting question is the value of the nugget (more interesting to me anyway). As a heavy metal, gold is incredibly dense, and has #rho=19.3*g*mL^-1#; this is almost twice the density of lead. Given that the current price of gold is #"$41-39USD"*g^-1# can you tell me the value of the nugget? That's big bucks.

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