Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Lab 9 Materials Available

Lab 9 Prep Package (PDF File)
Lab 9 Briefing Materials (PDF File)
Sample Lab 8 Data for inspection/reference (PDF from Google Spreadsheet)


Lab 9 will build on the good success of 8X.  Here we are adding the idea of an error budget to the idea of an experiment design.  An error budget considers all of the effects that lead to uncertainty in an experiment's results.  By estimating each effect and rolling them all up into a total error you have a good idea of the quality of results you can expect.  An error budget is also a good debugging tool.  If you see more error than expected in a measurement, you can check each term in the error budget to see where either an assumption is wrong or the apparatus is misbehaving.  This provides a systematic way for you make corrections.