Density and the Chest of Gold

Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to determine which chest out of five different treasure chests, contains the missing gold. Gold that had been stolen from the King long, long ago.

The story goes;

One dark and stormy night, the King had retired early to bed, due to the howling winds making the music in the great hall, too hard to enjoy properly. After placing his precious chest of gold into a special trunk at the end of his bed, the King collapsed onto his blankets and fell into a deep, deep sleep, lulled by the storm.

Meanwhile, outside his window, an unsavoury type lurked, and upon seeing the King fall into a deep sleep, took the opportunity to sneak into the King's chambers and steal his chest. The hapless thief, thought he had won the lottery, and danced gleefully down the garden path. He was so busy celebrating his skill and cunning, that he ran straight into the arms of the watch house guards.

Now just before he turned into the arms of the guards, he lost his footing, and the chest tumbled over the wall and into the river below. The guards were beside themselves, how bad would it look if the King were to find out that they'd caught the thief, only to lose the precious chest?

The guards gathered their bretherin and came up with a plan for the return of the chest. They would put the word out to every man woman and child in the village; that the King's chest had fallen into the river, and must be returned by sun up. Sadly, there were some people in the town who thought that they could make money out of the venture, and instead of looking for the real chest, they fogred thier own chest of 'gold' doubloons, and handed these in as well!

Now the King had five chests of gold doubloons to choose from.

Before the king could find out, the gurads had to determine which chest contained the real treasure! Woe betide any person who had tried to trick the King!

You will need a copy of your work-book to write the answers into. (printed for you)

To work out which chest contains the correct gold, you need to refresh your memory about Density.

You will use Density to find out which treasure is gold and which treasure is fake. Check out this link and copy out a good definition for Density into your work-book.

http://www.activewild.com/density-for-kids/

Density is  

 Density is

Once you have written your response in your work-book, you need to have a look at this website.

http://educatoral.com/density_of_substances.html

This website will give you some information on some common elements and their densities.

You will need the table later to help you work out which chest contains which substances.

Volume is 

Mass is 

Density of Gold = 19.3 g/cm3 

1. Copy the following data into the table provided. Make sure to place the correct Mass in the correct row and column.

2. The Volume of each Doubloon is exactly the same, at 35.5 cm3. Place this amount in each row under the Volume heading

3.Mass of a doubloon in each chest is:

1. Chest 1: 650g,
2. Chest 2: 1255g,
3. Chest 3: 455g,
4. Chest 4: 685.15g, and
5. Chest 5: 754g

4. The first row has been filled in and calculated for you. Remember Density = mass ÷ volume

Table of Density 

Now look at the table of common substances:  http://educatoral.com/density_of_substances.html and determine which of the chests that you have, contains the real gold doubloons.

Your answer should have the same desnity as gold.

Are you able to tell if any of the other chests have similar substances to gold? If so, how?

Challenge one: open the link, and complete the task.

http://www.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol/txtbk2/density.htm

Give this webquest a rating out of ten (ten being fabulous, one being not so fabulous)  

Did you learn something about density while you were exploring?

Would you like to do more webquests? 

What could we do to make this a better experience for you?  

By successfully completing this webquest, you are now able to understand how to work out unidentified subsatnces using Density.

Watcht the following YouTube clip on Density.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMlXU97E-uQ

Can you now explain why density determines our bouancy? Write one paragraph explaining why.

All infromation was taken from my head, or my work books, or the internet.

The websites (notated within) you have visited are designed for students to investigate concepts within science.

The pictures are random pictures taken from images on line.

Now you can explore the following Density game, and recored your scores!

https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/density