CHM-1045 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Significant Figures
2 Sep 2017
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Help other scientist repeat the experiment easily. How to determine significant figure: all non-zero digits are significant. Trailing zeroes with a decimal at the end are significant. Zeroes before a non-zero digits are not significant. For addition and subtraction, we use the number with the least decimal place. The first number has 2 decimal places and the second one have 1 decimal place, therefore the answer should have 1 decimal place. For multiplication and division, we use the number with the least number of significant figures. The first number has 2 significant figures and the second one has 3, therefore the answer has 2 significant figures. Counted and define number have infinite number of significant figures because they are accurate number. Counted numbers are numbers like 5 chairs or 6 books. Define numbers are like 1ft= 12 inches. When doing calculation with these types of numbers, we do not use them to define our final answer nor to round up.
