Type A Expmt Part 2 Exercise 3: Putting it All Together…

a) What is the standard uncertainty on each measurement as a result of reading the timer (hint: PDFs)?

b) What is the standard uncertainty on each measurement as a result of the randomness of the data (hint: use Excel or your calculator)?

c) Now you have two uncertainties on each measurement — the uncertainty associated with the limited precision of the stopwatch, and the random uncertainty associated with the reproducibility of the physical process of reaction. How then would you present “the” uncertainty on each measurement? (Remember, your goal is to describe the data.)

d) What is the standard uncertainty on the mean for your reaction time measurements?

e) Report your final reaction time (average ± uncertainty) measurement in proper form. Remember we still have two sources of error. Here we want to compare standard reading error to the standard uncertainty on the mean. Which do you choose?