Accuracy, Precision, and Significant Figures

Check Your Understanding

Perform the following calculations and express your answer using the correct number of significant digits.

(a) A woman has two bags weighing 13.5 pounds and one bag with a weight of 10.2 pounds. What is the total weight of the bags?

(b) The force $F$ on an object is equal to its mass $m$ multiplied by its acceleration $a$ . If a wagon with mass 55 kg accelerates at a rate of $0.0255 \mathrm{~m} / \mathrm{s}^{2}$ , what is the force on the wagon? (The unit of force is called the newton, and it is expressed with the symbol N).

Solution

(a) 37.2 pounds; Because the number of bags is an exact value, it is not considered in the significant figures.

(b) 1.4 N; Because the value 55 kg has only two significant figures, the final value must also contain two significant figures.

Callback before_footer in local_aigrade component should be migrated to new hook callback for core\hook\output\before_footer_html_generation

line 7225 of /lib/moodlelib.php: call to debugging()
line 7292 of /lib/moodlelib.php: call to {closure}()
line 71 of /lib/classes/hook/output/before_footer_html_generation.php: call to get_plugins_with_function()
line 987 of /lib/classes/output/core_renderer.php: call to core\hook\output\before_footer_html_generation->process_legacy_callbacks()
line 97 of /mod/book/tool/print/index.php: call to core\output\core_renderer->footer()