Physics Measuring Lab Report

Matthew Brayton

Physics Measuring Lab Report:

Purpose: To practice measuring, calculating uncertainty, and creating data tables.

In this lab we measured 5 things - The surface area of the top of the one table, the volume of the room in square meters, the width of a single piece of paper, the length of my foot, and the circumference of my head.

Data Table for the surface area of the top of one table:

Length l /cm

+/- 0.4cm

Average Length (LAvg) / cm +- 0.4 cm

Width (w) /cm +/- .3 cm

Average Width (WAvg) /cm +/- .3cm

Average Area (AAvg) /cm^2+/- 0.7 cm^2

Average Area (AAvg) / m^2 +- 0.006

Uncertainty of Average Area (UncAA) / m^2

122.1

122.2

60.4

60.4

7375

0.7375

0.006

122.3

60.2

122.1

60.5

Note:

We measured our table in the classroom

The floor is decorated with tiles that are the same length all around the room. We noticed that instead of lining up meter sticks along the wall, just measuring the tiles and multiplying how many tiles were along the wall would be a faster and more accurate way. We first had to measure the length of the tiles on the ends of the wall because they were cut off by the wall, therefore having a different length than the other tiles. The uncertainty for those were 0.5 millimeters because we only had to make one judgment since we had the meter stick up against the wall. The tiles in the middle had an uncertainty of 1 mm because we had to make two judgements (we had no wall up push the measure stick up to). To get the total length of the room we added the two end tiles, and multiplied the middle tile measurement by 39 because there were 39 tiles. We did this for each of our 3 sets of data to get 3 lengths. To get the uncertainty of this we take the uncertainty of the middle tile and multiply it by 39 and added the other two 0.5 uncertainties to get and uncertainty of 4 cm. Then we averaged them out and converted them to meters. Because the range/2 wasn’t over 4cm, 4cm is our uncertainty for the length

I measured my head by finding the biggest part of my skull and wrapping the measuring tape around it until it completed a full circle. I had to account for different amounts of hair, a different part of my head, how tight it is wrapped around my head, and two different measuring tape judgments. In total I added 0.6 cm of uncertainty.

Sample calculations:

Uncertainty of Average: Uncertainty of Average: Max-min2=54.3-54.02=.32=.15cm

Convert to average to meters: avg=(T1+T2+T2)3= 54.0+54.1+54.3300=0.541 m

Foot Length Data:

Length of foot(Lfoot) / cm +- 0.3

Average Length of Foot (ALfoot) / m +- 0.0003

Uncertainty of Average Length (UAlength)/ m

26.5