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Perhaps it is mixing apples and oranges to take a difference between a
volume and a mass, as Brian suggests, but we are indeed talking about
water displacement aren't we? The reality is that when I went to school
we still defined 1 cm^3 of water as 1 gram and also as 1 ml. That is,
they were equivalent by definition. Having one foot in chemistry as
well as one foot in physics, I can tell you that chemists still
interchange the three at will even though today water gets as dense as 1
g/ml only at 3.98 Celsius, and water never gets as dense as 1 g/cm^3.
Yes... I could have said "...the difference between the cup's mass and
THE MASS OF THE WATER DISPLACED BY the cup's material volume." I guess
I didn't think I was outside the box on that one. If we're getting that
picky about our assumptions, then I guess we also need to bring
temperature into the problem.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.