2 years ago

Why would the use of a ruler not be effective to measure the thickness of your foil?

1 answer:

3 0

It might be challenging to estimate the thickness of a thin layer of a substance. If a micrometer is available and the material is not too thin, it can be used to measure thickness directly. In the absence of a micrometer, thickness measurement must be done indirectly.

<h3>How is the thickness of aluminum foil determined?</h3>

All that is required of us is to cut a piece of the problematic aluminum foil, measure its height and length (so that we can determine its area), crumple the foil into a small ball, and weigh it using a milligram balance. The information needed to indirectly calculate the aluminum foil's thickness will then be available to us.

<h3>What measurement unit is best for representing the thickness of the foil?</h3>

The foil will likely be roughly a micrometer thick, which translates to a thickness of 1 x $10^{-4}$ cm in centimeters. Since an atom is roughly $10^{10}$ m in size, there will be 1 x $10^{4$ atoms in a unit of 1 x $10^{-4}$ cm.