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Practical investigations
Read our general notes on Risk Assessment
How accurate are your experiments?
Every time you take measurements in an experiment you are limited by the accuracy of your measuring
instruments. It is possible to calculate the limits of accuracy of different measuring instruments.

Errors which are not quantifiable also occur in experiments. You cannot calculate their exact effect. For
instance in a thermochemical experiment you may not be able to calculate heat losses.
MEASURING VOLUMES
You can measure the volume of a liquid with a measuring cylinder, pipette or burette.

Measuring cylinders
Measuring cylinders are least accurate. This may not matter if another measurement is even less
accurate, or if you want excess of a liquid. If the cylinder has graduations (marks) every 1 cm3, then when
you measure 10 cm3 you can be sure you have more than 9.5 cm3 but less than 10.5 cm3. In this case
your error is ±0.5 cm3 in 10 cm3, and the percentage error is 0.5/10 x 100 = 5%.

If you had measured 50 cm3 with the same measuring cylinder the error would have been 0.5/50 x 100 =
1% so the bigger the reading the smaller the percentage error.

If you use a big measuring cylinder the graduations may be every 2 cm3. If you measured 50 cm3 with one
of these you could be sure that you had more than 49 cm3 but less than 51 cm3, so your error would be 1
cm3 in your reading.

Pipettes
Pipettes are more accurate than measuring cylinders. Most school pipettes are made to an accuracy of
one drop when they are used correctly.The volume of one drop = 0.05 cm3. A 10 cm3 pipette has an error
of ±0.05 cm3in 10 cm3. The percentage error is 0.05/10 x 100 = 0.5%.

Burettes
Burettes are also more accurate than measuring cylinders. They have graduations every 0.1 cm3, so
when you take a reading it should not be more than 0.05 cm3 too high or too low.

However, when you use a burette you take a reading at the start and the end , so you have two errors of
0.05 cm3 i.e. total error = 0.10 cm3. If you are using your burette to do a titration there may be another
error of one or two drops which is due to your judgement of when the indicator changes colour. This
means that in a titration (as opposed to just using a burette to measure a volume) you may have an error
of 0.2 cm3.

MEASURING TEMPERATURE

Thermometers
When you use a thermometer there may be graduations every 1 °C. If you read a temperature as 20 °C
you can be sure it is more than 19.5 °C but less than 20.5 °C, so the error is ±0.5 °C in your reading.The
percentage error in a reading of 20 °C = 0.5/20 x 100 = 2.5%.

If you measure a temperature change the possible error is 0.5 °C at the start and the end. The errors
might cancel out, but if you measure one temperature too high and the other too low, your total error
could be twice the error for each reading.

MEASURING MASS

Balances
Very accurate balances read to 0.001 g.This means a reading of 1.000 g is more than 0.9995 g but less
than 1.0005 g.The percentage error in a reading of 1.000 g is 0.0005/1.000 x 100 = 0.05%.

Balances may also read to 2 decimal places i.e. they have readings every 0.01 g.This means a reading of
1.00 g is more than 0.995 g but less than 1.005 g.The percentage error in a reading of 1.00 g is
0.005/1.00 x 100 = 0.5%.

A GENERAL APPROACH
By now you should see how to calculate the error in using different measuring instruments. Look at the
graduations on the measuring scale. Decide what reading you can be certain about. Usually the error is
half the size of the graduation.

If your judgement is involved, for example when doing a titration or measuring a time, then you can only
estimate the error.

If heat losses causes error, it may be possible to design the experiment in a different way to allow for their
effect, but if not, their effect on the result cannot be calculated easily.

If there are several errors in measurement the final answer you reach will be affected by all of the errors.
As a rough guide you can assume that the total error is the sum of each of the individual percentage
errors.

To improve the accuracy of your results you need to reduce the size of the biggest error. For example, if
you have a small error in measuring mass, but a big error in reading temperature, then measure
temperatures more accurately!

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Tom Smith
A funny thing happened to me a LONG time ago. It was during a physics experiment, measuring
resistence or something suing bits of wire. Anyway, I think the "whole point" of the experiment was to
show us that there are innaccuracies involved measurement, and that the class would get wildly different
results. The class did get very different results. But when the teacher told us the "right" answer (obtained
by doing the experiment in a vacuum), me and my mate Carol Priestley had exactly the same same
answer. We were right to four or five decimal places. The teacher was flabbergasted. It taught me a
valuable lesson. Rely on fluke.
27 January 2003
updated: 18 August 2003
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