PHYS 110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Approximation Error, Measuring Instrument

• School: University of Victoria
• Department: Physics
• Course: PHYS 110
• Professor: Keeler Richard

Document Summary

A measurement by its very nature cannot be exact and it must be recognized that realistic error limits must be assigned to its value. If an experimenter claims too high a precision, he will mislead those who use his result for continuing work. If he claims pessimistically low precision, there may not be the serious consequences of the other extreme but he is degrading the worth of his own work. Other workers are thereby denied confidence in a result, which could have been of value. Each uncertainty of measurement should therefore be assessed carefully, striving to be realistic without undue optimism or pessimism. Note: uncertainties are required in all experimental measurements and calculations, in all of the phys 110/111 labs. unless otherwise indicated. Generally, the absolute uncertainty of a measurement is taken to be one half of the smallest division of the scale on the measuring instrument.