Chemistry 12th Edition

Published by McGraw-Hill Education
ISBN 10: 0078021510
ISBN 13: 978-0-07802-151-0

Chapter 1 - Chemistry: The Study of Change - Questions & Problems - Page 31: 1.37

Answer

(a) The student is not precise and not accurate. (b) The student is precise and accurate. (c) The student is precise but not accurate.

Work Step by Step

Precision refers to the closeness between measurements, i.e. you will have higher precision if your results for the same experiment are closer together. Accuracy refers to how close your results are to the theoretical value. (a) Since the student has high variation between his results, the results are not precise. This is confirmed since the range of his results is 1.1 The results are also not accurate, as his results are too far away from the theoretical value, i.e. he got a value of 88.2 when the theoretical value is known to be 87.0. (b) The student has low variation between his results, so the results are precise. This is confirmed by the range of 0.3. The results are also accurate, since they are very close to the theoretical value. (c) The student has low variation between his results, so the results are precise. This is confirmed by the range of 0.2 The results are inaccurate, however, since they are not close to the theoretical value, i.e. he got a result of 87.9 when the theoretical value is known to be 87.0.
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