Pressure and Buoyant Force lab conclusion

            This was a simple lab that helped me understand Archimedes’ principle when I had to calculate the buoyant force on a can of sand when we put it in a container of water. Using the formula P=F/A (or, in other terms, P=mg/A). We also used P=pwgh. We used the information that we put in our graph (Graph #1) to get the pressure. The main element we had to deal with in this lab was how much room there was for error. We could measure the depth incorrectly, whether it was just off, using the wrong units, or measuring the wrong part of the can (it happens). The dirt ratio was not perfect for the small can to the large can. It said to put dirt in it until the can was 3/4^th under water, but instead we had our small can around 7/8^th under water and our large can was about 3/4^th under water. This difference could be the reason for our 91% difference in the cans percentage difference (Graph #1, last column). One other mistake my group and I made was that we didn’t convert the weight down to grams from kilograms, which made everything messy. Nevertheless, this lab was very helpful in understanding buoyant force and the forces that push down the can.