Materials
- Single Serving Size (1L or less) bottles filled with various items
- students brought in materials of their choice over the course of a week
- Triple Beam Balance (TBB)
- Mass Set
- Student Handout (Triple Beam Balance Bottles pdf)
Procedures – Part 1
- Provide each lab group with an assortment of bottles
- Students will arrange the bottles from lightest to heaviest by making observations
- They will record the order of the bottles and their contents with #1 as the lightest and #10 the heaviest on their handout
- my groups used 9 bottles, but there is room on the handout for 10
- Using the set of masses, they will estimate the mass of each bottle by holding a bottle in one hand and a mass in the other hand, recording their estimations on the handout
Procedures – Part 2
- Students will transfer their estimation to the back page
- Using the TBB they will record the actual masses of the bottles
- Then they will rank the bottles from lightest (#1) to heaviest (#10) and compare their estimation to the actual masses. How close were the estimations to the actual masses? Did they place the bottles in the correct order?
Results
| Bottle # | Mass (g) | Bottle # | Mass (g) | Bottle # | Mass (g) |
| 1 | 126.9 | 14 | 281 | 27 | 192.3 |
| 2 | 72.9 | 15 | 336.5 | 28 | 330.9 |
| 3 | 29.6 | 16 | 223 | 29 | 465 |
| 4 | 438 | 17 | 70 | 30 | 195 |
| 5 | 202.1 | 18 | 36.43 | 31 | 59.1 |
| 6 | 166 | 19 | 185 | 32 | 168.8 |
| 7 | 63.1 | 20 | 88 | 33 | 33 |
| 8 | 301.5 | 21 | 140.1 | 34 | 100 |
| 9 | 224 | 22 | 49.1 | 35 | 402.5 |
| 10 | 610+ | 23 | 73.3 | 36 | 187.1 |
| 11 | 67.1 | 24 | 54.9 | 37 | 318.4 |
| 12 | 251.8 | 25 | 27.5 | 38 | |
| 13 | 410.1 | 26 | 406 | 39 |
You can also use these bottles as part of your density unit, see my blog entry for more information.
Middle School Science Blog 
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