While vacationing at the Outer Banks of North Carolina, you find and old coin th

Question

While vacationing at the Outer Banks of North Carolina, you find and old coin that looks like it is made of gold. You know there were many shipwrecks here, so you take the coin home to check the possibility of it being gold. You suspend the coin from a spring scale and find that it has a weight in air of 1.75 oz (mass= 49.7g). You then let the coin hang submerged in a glass of water and find that the scale reads 1.66 oz (mass= 47.1g). Should you get excited about the possibility that this coin might really be gold?

Explanation / Answer

displaced water = (49.7 g - 47.1 g) * ( 1 mL / 1 g) = 2.6 mL density of material = 49.7 g / 2.6 mL = 19.1153846 grams density of gold is 19.3 g. So perhaps it is an alloy with gold. Note however, there aren't many alloys that can have similar densities to gold. Sometimes they incorporate platinum, which is even more expensive.

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