College

Salad oil floats on water. Water has a density of 1.0 g/cm\(^3\). What can you say about the density of the salad oil?

Answer :

Answer:

Density of the oil is lesser than that of the water

Explanation:

The density of water is given as 1.0g/cm³.

Salad oil is found to float on water, this implies that the density of this salad oil is lesser than that of the water.

  • When the density of a substance is greater than another, it will sink. If the density of the salad oil is greater than that of water, then it will sink and not float.
  • Since the oil floats on water, the density of the oil is lesser than that of the water.

Density is the mass per unit volume of a substance.

Final answer:

The density of the salad oil must be less than 1.0 g/cm³ because it floats on water, which indicates that it has a lower mass to volume ratio than water.

Explanation:

Since salad oil floats on water, and we know that water has a density of 1.0 g/cm3, we can conclude that the density of the salad oil must be less than that of water. Objects that are less dense than water, such as ice or oils, tend to float. Therefore, based on the principle that a substance will float if its density is less than the density of the liquid it is placed in, we can conclude that the salad oil has a density of less than 1.0 g/cm3. In general, when comparing the mass of a given volume of two substances, if one substance floats on the other, it indicates that the substance with lesser mass per unit volume—which is by definition its density—is the one floating.