16 September 2014: Propagated Uncertainties and Unknown Masses Lab 6 Part 2

Objectives:
1) Finding the mass of an unknown object using tensions and angles
2) Using the skills acquired in part 1 of this lab to propagate the uncertainty in our calculations

Materials:
1) A preset setup
2) An unknown mass

Setup:
Our setup looked like this: (It is important to note that we had nothing to do with the setup as it was already made for us)

From this picture you can see the set up consists of 2 10 N spring scales placed at some unknown angle that are holding up an unknown mass object.

Procedure:

First we collected the data needed to calculate the mass of this object. We needed the Force exerted by both spring scales and the angles at which both were placed. The data gathered can be seen below:

From this data we were able to calculate the mass of the unknown object. The calculations can be seen below:

m=.501 kg

Now that we had the mass of the unknown object, we could propagate uncertainty. The calculations for the propagated uncertainty can be seen below:

dm=0.0605 kg

Conclusions:

Our final data showed that

m=0.501 kg

dm=0.0605 kg 

So it can be said that m= 0.501 kg + 0.0605 kg

Sources of uncertainty most likely lie in the angle measurement. It was hard to get this measurement without disturbing the preset set up.