I have to do a Physics assignment where I find my body volume in mL?

Question

I have to use my bathtub and kitchen measurement utensils...how will this work? Can I cheat and convert my weight to KG, then to mL somehow? I don't know how I'm going to measure how much the water goes up, or fit my whole body under. Help!

Answer 1

Don't cheat!

Why don't you try this. With you in the bathtub, fill it with the faucet until it is almost running over, then get out.

Now get a big pot that you have already premeasured it's volume. Fill the pot and pour into the bathtub for the water that you displaced. Do this for full pots until you can't add any more full pots. Now get a two cup (or other) measure and finish filling the tub. You have used x amount of full pots and however many and partial measuring cups. Add it all up and convert your amount to ml.

Please don't cheat. You can do this.

(1 quart = 4 cups = 941 milliliters )

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Answer 2

Well using the bathtub is easy... but the real question should be how can you catch the water? The easiest way to find a body (being an object with area and mass) is to submerge it into a pool of water which is at it's container's maximum capacity, this would create an overflow and when you measure the overflow you get that body's volume in mL. There is no cheat to doing this, because your volume is made up of the amount of area you take up and not your mass, you can't convert you weight to mL because your weight doesn't define an area, example person a and b both weigh 150lbs, person a is short and chunky, while person b) is taller and has more muscle tone, these two people weigh the same amount but due to their bodies being diffent they have two different volumes. I would check the instructions again and see if it gives a better explanation of the experiment.

Oh I like Robert L's answer... Leave it to me to compleatly forget about the 3gal jug/5gal jug riddle.

Answer 3

one of these should get you close enough to get by. I myself would use the first one and then swear blind that I did the third

AVERAGE VOLUME:
1a.) A very good first approximation to your question is to simply find the
average human mass (easy enough to weigh) and divide by 0.001 kg/cm^3.
1b.) Lets take me for example, I am about 2.80 ft^3.
2.) Or as a very rough approximation you could consider a person to be
cylindrical in form and calculate the volume of the "cylinder" w/ an
effective diameter. (not so accurate)
3.) Even better (but not too practical), if you have a 55 gallon barrel
or equivalent ), and can fit in it, fill it with water. Put yourself, or
subject in the barrel, completely submersing 100% of body. Come out of the
barrel, trying to keep as much of the water dripping off of you into the
barrel as possible. Measure the displaced water height and multiply by the
barrel cross section and theres your volume.