Suppose that you are working as a lab technician for a world famousarcheologist and upon returning from an extended field trip toCentral America, you are assigned a box of precious metal objectsfrom the latest digging expedition. Your boss has asked youto determine what the objects are made of but resources are verylimited by budgetary cuts at the University. Most of theobjects appear to be made of gold but your supervisor wants to becertain of his findings as you prepare for publication.

You have at your lab the following equipment: waterpurification units; laboratory glassware of all sorts; digitalbalances accurate to the milligram and microgram scale; and, acomputer with high speed internet access. The boss leaves arather scripted note on your desk with the name "Archimedes anddensity" written on it, but he heads off to Europe before you canask any questions.

Using creative lab procedures, you determine the density ofthe two largest objects to be exactly 17.5 grams/cm^3. Howdid you do this?

1. What is the problem or the question to be solved?
2. How was the problem solved?
a. What was the hypothesis that was tested?
b. What are the variables that were used?
3. Based on your answer to #2, how was the hypothesistested?
4. Based on the experimental results, what sources of errorexist in the process?
5. What can you concluded based on the results?