Measurement, Precision, and Accuracy

NotebookLM prompts

Flashcard generation (work in progress, cards are too generic)

Please generate a set of flashcards to help me learn the material in section number. Each card front should appear only once. If a card has more than one possible answer, include all answers on the same card instead of making multiple cards for the same question. Please focus on understanding the mathematical relationships covered in the material, and on recognizing what the appropriate uses are for each relation. I would like to have 20 cards in JSON syntax, as an array of objects. Each object is one flashcard, and has a "front" and a "back" property whose value is the card's front or back text, respectively.

Quiz generation

Please create a quiz with six questions that allows my students to practice their understanding of the ideas from chapter chapter number. The questions should require them to compute numerical answers, but the numbers should be small and easy to work with. Please focus on problems involving topics.

Links and useful resources

Lesson-specific resource links

Lab setup

Measuring volume with displacement

Graduated cylinder
- Metal d6
- metal d4
- glass marble
dense objects to check
Volume of sphere $\frac{4}{3} π r^{3}$
Volume of cube $l^{3}$
Volume of tetrahedron $\frac{l^{3}}{6 \sqrt{2}}$

Procedure:

Compute the volume of each object with the formula
Measure the volume with displacement method, 5 measurements each
Compare results

Measuring distance

Measure three of my setup blocks, in cm
Use ruler, meter stick, and calipers
Compare to exact known value.
One inch is exactly 2.54 cm by definition

Problems encountered

Our graduated cylinder's finest measurement was 1 mL, but the objects were on the order of 1-3 mL so the tool lacked resolution
Using the volume formulas requires you to pay close attention to units
Density is a derived unit, you have to measure separate properties of volume and mass before you compute the density

Concept summary and connections

precision vs accuracy
measurement error
when multiple measurements improve accuracy
lab notebook format
Significant figures
- All certain digits plus one doubtful

Media resources

Guided practice

Do Lab 1 in [[Physics_Lab_Manual_Full-openstax.pdf]]
#hw (physics) Exercises 9-12 on this page 2025-01-15