User's Manual

Discover Density Set 012–07192A
8
We might guess, for the fluorite example, that the exponent is 2, so y = c x
2
.
This could be expressed in words as “y is proportional to x
2
.” Making a
new table results in the following: (A computer spreadsheet program is an
efficient way of creating such tables.)
x
2
y
edge
2
mass
(cm
2
) (g)
0.6 0.8
1.7 3.3
4.0 12.0
7.3 29.5
13.7 75.9
A graph of the above data does not result in a straight-line, as would have
been the case if y had been proportional to x
2
. See Figure 3.
Figure 3
Graph of x
2
vs mass