www.mindbites.com In this lesson, Prof. Yee discusses precision and accuracy in measurements. He explains that all measurements will have a degree of uncertainty due to instrumentation, and the range of uncertainty will appear in the last digit of the measurement. You want to have measurements that are both precise and accurate. Precision is the reproducibility of the measurement of a quantity and is tied to the concept of random error. Prof. Yee uses a ruler as an example of precision. Accuracy refers to how close a measurement is to a hypothetical true value. It is possible for a measurement to be precise but not accurate if there is a systematic error. Systematic error is an error inherent to the measurement of a value, such as a clock that is consistently 5 minutes fast. Finally, Prof. Yee explains the relationship between precision and accuracy using a game of darts. Taught by Professor Yee, this lesson was selected from a broader, comprehensive course, Chemistry. This course and others are available from Thinkwell, Inc. The full course can be found at www.thinkwell.com The full course covers atoms, molecules and ions, stoichiometry, reactions in aqueous solutions, gases, thermochemistry, Modern Atomic Theory, electron configurations, periodicity, chemical bonding, molecular geometry, bonding theory, oxidation-reduction reactions, condensed phases, solution properties, kinetics, acids and bases, organic reactions, thermodynamics, nuclear chemistry, metals, nonmetals …
Chemistry: Precision and Accuracy
Chemistry: Basic Buffers
www.mindbites.com This lesson was selected from a broader, comprehensive course, Chemistry, taught by Professor Harman, Professor Yee, and Professor Sammakia. This course and others are available from Thinkwell, Inc. The full course can be found at www.thinkwell.com The full course covers atoms, molecules and ions, stoichiometry, reactions in aqueous solutions, gases, thermochemistry, Modern Atomic Theory, electron configurations, periodicity, chemical bonding, molecular geometry, bonding theory, oxidation-reduction reactions, condensed phases, solution properties, kinetics, acids and bases, organic reactions, thermodynamics, nuclear chemistry, metals, nonmetals, biochemistry, organic chemistry, and more. Dean Harman is a professor of chemistry at the University of Virginia, where he has been honored with several teaching awards. He heads Harman Research Group, which specializes in the novel organic transformations made possible by electron-rich metal centers such as Os(II), RE(I), AND W(0). He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Gordon Yee is an associate professor of chemistry at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and completed postdoctoral work at DuPont. A widely published author, Professor Yee studies molecule-based magnetism. Tarek Sammakia is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder where he teaches organic chemistry to undergraduate and graduate students. He received his Ph.D. from Yale …