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How to do well at the Physics AS EMPA?

I have task 1 of the EMPA this Thursday, and our teachers have done nothing. We did half a mock EMPA but we got half-assed feedback about it, and we're doing the other half of the mock tomorrow, giving us no time for ANY feedback at all until Thursday. Additionally they haven't taught us anything, like percentage error or uncertainty which I still don't understand at all. I've looked at past EMPAs and they are full of questions with answers to which always seem so difficult to come across... What am I supposed to do?
Reply 1
Avatar for Jorus
Jorus
6
Absolute uncertainty is the smallest unit of measurement on whatever equipment you are using.

So say you measure a length of 5.1cm on a ruler that measured up to mm, you would say 5.1cm +/- 1mm is the uncertainty.

Percentage uncertainty is absolute uncertainty divided by the reading itself, multiplied by 100. So,

0.001m divided by 0.051m, keeping with the example above, giving a % uncertainty of about 1.96%. So you could say your reading of 5.1cm has a percentage uncertainty of 1.96% to 3 significant figures.

There are plenty of useful tutorials about uncertainties on YouTube, just search for 'physics empa uncertainties' or something similar, but those are the basics. Apart from that, make sure you revise the topics the EMPA will be on (if you've been told them), and have a look at past papers just to see what the papers are laid out like.

Don't worry too much about it, it's not the hardest thing in the world, take it step-by-step.
Reply 2
Avatar for potatomaker
potatomaker
OP
2
Original post by Jorus
Absolute uncertainty is the smallest unit of measurement on whatever equipment you are using.

So say you measure a length of 5.1cm on a ruler that measured up to mm, you would say 5.1cm +/- 1mm is the uncertainty.

Percentage uncertainty is absolute uncertainty divided by the reading itself, multiplied by 100. So,

0.001m divided by 0.051m, keeping with the example above, giving a % uncertainty of about 1.96%. So you could say your reading of 5.1cm has a percentage uncertainty of 1.96% to 3 significant figures.

There are plenty of useful tutorials about uncertainties on YouTube, just search for 'physics empa uncertainties' or something similar, but those are the basics. Apart from that, make sure you revise the topics the EMPA will be on (if you've been told them), and have a look at past papers just to see what the papers are laid out like.

Don't worry too much about it, it's not the hardest thing in the world, take it step-by-step.



Thanks for your help!

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