Chapter 1: Measurement

Quantities

Units, Standards & SI System

Prefixes

Dimensions & Dimensional Analysis

Errors & Accuracy

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Lesson Outcomes
At the end of the lesson, students should be able to: 1. state the meaning & give examples of physical quantities

2. distinguish between base quantities & derived quantities

3. state what the standards are measured against 4. write values in prefix or standard forms

5. apply dimensional analysis to solve equations

6. state the different types of errors 7. define the terms precision and accuracy 8. determine the uncertainty or error of a measurement.

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"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

Albert Einstein Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his work on the photoelectric effect.

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Physical Quantities
Physics is a quantitative science based on measurement.

A physical quantity is quantity with a numerical value and units.

Physical quantities are assigned to measurements taken.

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Base and Derived Quantities

There are so many physical quantities and they can be categorised as base and derived quantities.

Base quantities are the ones that you can measure directly by using suitable instruments. Mass, length and time are examples of base quantities.
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The International System of Units or SI (Systme International), is a name adopted by the Eleventh General Conference on Weights and Measures, held in Paris in 1960, for a universal, unified, selfconsistent system of measurement units based on the mks (meter-kilogram-second) system *.

* Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2003. 1993-2002 Microsoft Corporation.

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Table 1. Base Quantities

QUANTITY Length Mass NAME OF BASE SI UNIT meter kilogram SYMBOL m kg

Time
Electric current Temperature

second
ampere Kelvin

s
A K

Amount of substance
Luminous intensity

mole
candela

mol
cd

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Any physical quantity will comprise of certain base quantities. If you combine two or more base quantities accordingly, you will get a derived quantity. For example, if you combine length and time accordingly, you might find the speed, which is a derived quantity. Other derived quantities include area, acceleration, density, energy and power .
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Table 2 : Derived Quantities

QUANTITY
Area Volume Velocity Acceleration Density Current density Magnetic field strength Specific volume Luminance

NAME OF DERIVED Sl UNIT SYMBOL

square metre cubic metre metres per second metres per second squared kilograms per cubic metres amperes per square metre amperes per metre cubic metres per kilogram candelas per square metre m m
2 3

m/s m/s
2 3

kg/m A/m

A/m m /kg cd/m

2 3

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Vector and Scalar Quantities

A physical quantity is categorized either as a vector or scalar quantity. A scalar quantity is a quantity with magnitude only. Examples are distance, mass and energy.

A vector quantity is a quantity with both magnitude and direction. Examples include displacement, velocity and force.

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Standards
Every unit used as measurement of a certain quantity has a standard which is accepted by international agreement. For example, the standard of length... 1 meter = 1650763.73 times the wavelength of light emitted by krypton-86 (1960). 1 meter = path travelled by light in vacuum in 1/299792458 second (1983).
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Similarly, the standard of mass and time... 1 kilogram = mass of 1 cubic decimeter of pure water at the temperature of its maximum density (4.0 C/39.2 F)

1 second = (Before 1967) 1/86,400 of a mean solar day or one complete rotation of the Earth on its axis in relation to the Sun. In 1967, the cesium atom's natural frequency was formally recognized as the new standard of time: 1 second is defined as time taken for exactly 9,192,631,770 oscillations or cycles of the cesium atom.
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Prefix
When dealing with very large or very small quantities, a prefix to the unit name is used that has the effect of multiplying the unit by some power of ten. An example is the millisecond (103 s)

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Table 3 : Prefixes

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Dimension and Dimension Analysis

Every quantity has a dimension expressed in terms of the basic units.

The symbols for the dimensions of the basic units mass, length and time are M, L and T respectively. The dimension of any derived quantity can be expressed in terms of M, L and T.

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Quantity Mass Distance Time Velocity

Symbol m x t v

Units kg m s m s-1

Dimension M L T LT-1

Momentum

kg ms-1

MLT-1

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Application of Dimensional Analysis

Two quantities can be equal ONLY IF they have the same dimensions.
Eg. If a = b + c + d2 Then [a] = [b] and [a] = [c] and [a] = [d2]

BUT, having the same dimensions does NOT always mean they are equal.
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Example: Use dimensional analysis to determine how the period, T, of a simple pendulum depends on the length & mass of pendulum, and gravity (l, m, and/or g)

T = k l wm xg z

[ T ] = [ k l w m x g z ] = Lw M x (L/T2) z
T = Lw+z Mx T2z
w + z = 0, x = 0, 2z = 1 z=,w=,x=0

T = k l g
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Errors
The usual meaning of the word error is mistake. However the term error is used in experimental physics to describe the quantity by which result obtained by observation differs from an accurate determination (actual value). Error is also called uncertainty.

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So in every practical measurement there is some degree of error or uncertainty. In assessing errors, whether human or instrumental, there are two types of error:i) random and ii) systematic errors.

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Random errors
Random error results from unknown and unpredictable variations in experimental situations. Random errors can be also referred to as accidental errors and are at times beyond the control of the observer.

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Random errors will cause the measured value to be sometimes higher or lower than the actual value.
Taking a large number of readings and then finding the mean value can reduce the effect of random errors. Source of random errors can be mechanical vibrations of the experimental setup or unpredictable fluctuations in temperature, etc.

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Systematic errors
A reading consistently shifted in one direction is called a systematic error. Systematic errors are usually associated with particular measurement instruments or techniques such as an improperly calibrated instrument.

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Other examples include zero error and parallax error.

Human reaction time can also be classified under this category.

Systematic errors are more serious form of error since they cannot be reduced by taking repeated readings or by any other form of averaging.

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Accuracy and Precision

The accuracy of a measurement signifies how close it comes to the true value.

Precision refers to the agreement among repeated measurements, the measure of how close together they are. The more precise the measurements, the closer together they are.

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Good precision but poor accuracy

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Poor precision and poor accuracy. (average reading has good accuracy)

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Good precision and good accuracy

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If both types of error are small, then the measurement is accurate and precise.
One point to note is that the degree of accuracy or uncertainty of a measurement largely depend on the quality of the instrument and the skills of the person carrying out the experiment. The degree of accuracy or uncertainty of a measurement can usually be indicated by the number of significant figures used.

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A visitor to a Museum was admiring a Tyrannosaurus fossil, and asked a nearby museum employee how old it was.

"That skeleton's sixty-five million and three years, two months and eighteen days old," the employee replied.
"How can you know it that well?" she asked.

"Well, when I started working here, I asked a scientist the exact same question, and he said it was sixty-five million years old and that was three years, two months and eighteen days ago."
In the above example, the humor is that the employee fails to understand the scientist's implication of the uncertainty in the age of the fossil.

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Exercise
For each of these measurement, determine the uncertainty. 1. The length of the table is 12.52 m.
2. The girls weight is 45 kg.

3. The diameter of the wire is 5.25 mm.

4. The fossils are 3 106 years old.

5. The period of oscillation of the pendulum is 1.2 s.

6. The population of Malaysia is 28.7 million.

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