PHYS 257- Final Exam Guide - Comprehensive Notes for the exam ( 35 pages long!)
29 Mar 2018
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Document Summary
Discrovering new phenomena and investigating the behaviour of physical systems. Accurately measuring the value of defined physical quantities. Testing hypotheses and the validities of models and theories. Mathematical treatment of large quantities of data. Helps determine how much confidence (or the level of uncertainty) an experimenter can have in their results. Repeated measurements of the same quantity taken with exactly the same experimental apparatus in exactly the same way will often (usually?) yield different results! The best estimate of the true centre and width of our data distribution based solely on our measurements is found with: the mean and standard deviation. Error: the difference between the measurement of a quantity and the true-value" of that quantity. Usually estimated based on uncertainty of instruments, calibrations and repeated measurements. Measurements are useless unless you know their uncertainty. Measurement precision: how well the measurement was made. Also relates to the reproducibility of a measurement.
