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Mass and volume
Mass of a liter of water
The mass of a liter of water can be determined using one of the described methods for weighing a liquid.
The chosen container must have a capacity of 1 liter but it is also possible to use a smaller container and use the proportionality between mass and volume.
In order to obtain the best result, we should use a container with the most accurate indications of volume. Beakers, flasks and test tubes have graduations but their accuracy is lower than that of a volumetric flask.
There are different models of volumetric flask: 25, 50, 100, 500 mL and 1L.
Models of 1 L remain quite rare but we may measure the mass of 500 mL of water and multiply the result by 2 to obtain the mass of 1 L (1000 mL) of water.
The measure gives finally this result:
A liter of pure water has a mass of 1 kg
This value is a characteristic of pure water: another pure substance or a mixture that contains water would have a different mass.
This value has a historical origin: a kilogram was defined as the mass of a liter of pure water in 1995.
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