A Simple Classroom Experiment on Uncertainty of Measurement

During my years of teaching experience I have found that many freshmen have difficulty in comprehending the inherent
nature of the concept of uncertainty involved in experimental measurements. Years ago I stumbled upon a simple experiment
to demonstrate the principle, and I have repeated the experiment in every freshman class I have taught and the result has
always been rewarding.
I ask the class how many of them have a watch; normally over 80 percent of the students in the class will have watches.
Next I ask the students to set their watches to read the correct time (which I arbitrarily decide to be the time on my watch).
Next, I tell the class that I will drop a piece of chalk on the top of the desk and they are to record the time to the nearest minute
as soon as they hear the sound, and I instruct them to keep their eyeson their watch and listen for the sound. Following are
the times recorded by a section recently.

was done by skilled operators (they have been reading watches for years).
I then proceed with the treatment of the data which includes deriving the mean, the mode, the median, the average
deviation, the standard deviation, the probable deviation. Although some of the data are obviously suspect, I explicitly
demonstrate the statistical rules for the rejection data (Chauvenet's criterion). Experimenters reporting -60, -5,0:00, f 5 5 ,
etc. most orobablv misunderstood instructions (exoerimental orocedure). and those reoortine 9:rx and 1l:ax ohvinuslv

drove home. I recommend the experiment

B. Sen
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, 70803

468 / Journal of ChemicalEducation