Comparing to Standards Lab Report

The main focus of this lab will be able to classify measurements as accurate or precise based on the type of measurement that they take, and then calculate the error of the tools we used. I hypothesized that the mass, thermometer, and liquid volume, would all be incorrect when gathering and measuring the data. So I basically thought that there would be about a 1%-10% error percentage within all of the instruments.

If I had to choose any one of the tools in the experiment when dealing with the liquid volume portion, I believe the Flask that we had used would be the most accurate, because as I recall, Mrs. Houfe had said so a while before we started the experiment. I think that the thermometer is sort of a 50/50 because I remember Mr. Schmutzer teaching us that it’s possible for them to be very inaccurate if they were to touch the sides or bottom of the beaker if you’re not careful. For the mass, I think the more accurate of the two would be the Triple Beam Balance, mainly for the reason that I personally can control how far the weights go versus just an inaccurate machine.

Within this lab, we had measured how accurate all the instruments were and then proceeded to test their precision by comparing them to other instruments. To see how accurate the balances were, we measured the instruments one at a time, same with the liquid volume ones. Precision was at risk though, once we compared them with each other. The only change we really endured was that, sadly, we did not have a 150 g mass, so instead, we had to use a combination of the 50 g and the 100 g when measuring on both the scales. Also, even though my partner and I checked and double checked, (possibly triple checked), our meniscus we may have read it incorrectly purely out of inexperience.

Once I was done with the lab I realized that all of the Liquid Volume instruments were pretty accurate. The most accurate liquid volume tool was the Graduated Cylinder. It measured 250 mL after we poured 250 mL.

Instrument
Marked Volume
Actual Volume
Error