Original paper
A mercury-displacement method for stone bulk-density determinations
Franzini, Marco; Lezzerini, Marco
European Journal of Mineralogy Volume 15 Number 1 (2003), p. 225 - 229
published: Feb 18, 2003
Abstract
In this paper, we present an apparatus developed to measure stone bulk density by a mercury-displacement method. Due to the high surface tension of mercury,the presence of rough surfaces in the samples may cause overestimation of the bulk volume by up to about + 0.1 %. Instead, accuracies of better than ± 0.03 % can be attained on marble and monzogranite samples of about 35 cm3 volume by polishing the sample surface with 800 mesh emery paper and using a balance with a sensitivity of 0.01 g. The same measurement precision can be attained on much smaller samples simply by using a more precise balance.
Keywords
mercury-displacement method • volume • density • water-displacement method