how would you measure the volume of water that a sponge can pick up?

Answer 1

Do it then squeeze it into a measuring cup.

Answer 2

Weigh the dry sponge, soak it in water, hold it and let the excess drip off, then weigh the fully loaded sponge, then divide the mass by the density (if you use the metric system it's easy because the density is 1 g/cc).

Soak the sponge, put it in a sealed container and heat to 105 degree C. Have a pressure gauge attached to the sealed chamber. By using PV=nRT you can calculate the amount of water molecules present and then the volume of liquid water that would equate to.

Measure out a discrete amount of water with a graduated cylinder, pour into a larger container. Soak the sponge in this container remove it and pour the remaining contents into the graduated cylinder. The difference is your volume.

Soak the sponge, measure its temperature. Stick it in a 100Watt microwave oven for 10 seconds on high. Measure the temperature afterward. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, you just gave it 1000 Joules. Joules can be converted to Calories and it takes 1 calorie to raise 1 cc of water 1 degree Celcius

Answer 3

fill measuring thing with water, put sponge in, take sponge out, see how far down it went