HOW CAN I SOLVE THIS? HELP

Question

The height of the table is 4 m. by repeated measurements the range of values vary because it is not stretched straight, which causes the heights in the first three trials to be 3.35m, 4.20m, and 3.47m. Find the uncertainties and its errors.

Answer 1

Hey Shin, this sounds like a standard deviation problem to me, assuming that you've been working with that formula.

1. This link here explains how the AP physics deals with uncertainty : https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-physics-quant-skills-teachers-guide.pdf
2. ^^^ page 6 will be relevant for you.
3. It seems like you're going to want to use 4m as your mean value ("M"), then you are going to use the standard deviation formula with the 3 given values (where N = 3).
4. Then you can use the SEM formula to find the standard error with this data set. So overall, you will write your answer as h = 4m +- SEM
5. The SEM will be your absolute uncertainty, and from there you should be able to find the other uncertainties.

Hope this helps.