you could use water, but the mesure will less accurate then with benzene at room temperature. This as to do with with the surface tension of benzene and therefore the way it wets the glass and its reactivity with water.

Hi Gurinder...You can use both water as well as organic solvents to measure density and it will come out to be the same....All you need to take care of is that the liquid should not react with glass. Water is usually not [preferred because most of the glasses tend to corrode as soon as they come in contact with water. Since they are amorphous in nature, it is easy to leach out ions from the glasses. Therefore if you are sure that your glass is chemically inert or highly durable and won't react with water during its short exposure, you can do it. I know the kind of glasses you make in in GNDU and so I will suggest you to stick to organic solvents as borate glasses are not highly durable.

Regarding benzene, you do not always need to use benzene; you can use any organic solvent with known density which does no have tendency to evaporate. For example, you can't use ethanol or acetone but you can definitely use toluene or diethy pthalate or glycol.

I hope this helps.

Gurinder: got your request for some of my research articles from research gate. Write to me at [email protected] and I will send you the papers.

Thank Dr. Ashutosh Goel for suggestions.

Density ρ of all glass samples was calculated employing the Archimedes principle using water as the immersion liquid

you can see this paper

Mi-tang Wang , Jin-shuCheng , MeiLi , FengHe, Physica B 406 (2011) 187–191

also you can use o-xylene (99.99% pure) of known density is around 0.87 g/mL

I quite agree with them

Hello Gurinder,

you can also use xylene or acetone to determine the density of glass. Usually we used xylene. Goodluck! ;)

Thanks

The selection of the solution depends on your host glass chemical durability and water resistivity. Certain compositions react with particular solutions easily even at room temperature. For example, some of phosphate glasses are very hygroscopic and absorb the water as sson as immersed. It will drastically change the structural and optical properties of phosphate glass samples. Antimony and borates are also sensitive options, while tellurium is stronger in soft solutions.

About errors possibly associated with the density-measurement of non-porous bulk solid samples by the Archimedes method, and on demoting their influence; see: https://www.researchgate.net/post/What-factors-affect-the-density-measurement-of-metals-using--How-to-get-accurate-measurements-of-density-using-this-method

For the proper application of Archimedes method to access glass density, please check answers given to the following related discussion: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Use-of-Benzene-in-determining-the-density-of-glasses-by-archimedes-principle

For small glass samples, you may want to consider the 'method of heavy liquids', using a density gradient column, which I have briefly presented elsewhere at this forum: https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_do_I_measure_the_density_of_small_quantities_of_material_glass