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Question

Give reason why displacement method is used for measuring the volume of an irregular solid

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Solution

Displacement is usually the method that is used to measure the volume of an irregularly shaped object. The object is simply submerged in a liquid and the volume of liquid that is displaced is measured.

Suppose you want to show or demonstrate how to measure the volume of an irregularly shaped object. While you can easily measure the volume of a rectangular object by measuring the lengths of the sides, that technique does not work for an irregularly shaped object.

The solution to this problem is based on the fact that volume is the space an object takes up. If the object is immersed in water, it will displace water equal to the volume of the object. The problem then is to measure the water displaced by the object. A clever way of doing that is to place the object in a bucket that is filled to the top. Then you collect the displaced water that overflows from the bucket.

You can easily measure the volume of the displaced water to find the volume of the object. You can verify the method works by trying it with an object of known volume. A drawback of this method is when the object is bigger than any available container. A problem with this method is if the object is bigger than any available container.


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