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Known facts about measurements:
All measurements have an
uncertainty inherent to themspecifically the last reported digit
The reported value contains known
digits plus one digit that is an
estimated value
The last one in the measurement
Individual measurements are easy to assess
as to their precision
But what happens when we perform a
calculation like finding the area of a square
10.7mm
We establish rules for maintaining the level of
precision in our measured value
The technique is called Significant Figure or
Significant Digits – referred to as SigFigs-
The initial step in this procedure is to
determine the numbers of SigFigs in a
measurement:
all counting numbers have an infinite
number of SigFigs- as such they are not an
issue for us
values established by definition have
infinite number of SigFigs like 1m = 100cm
all values obtained through
experiments are Significant Figures
Rules for Determining the Number of SigFigs
Obtained from our Measurements:
All nonzero digits are significant
All zeros between nonzero digits are
significant – commonly called sandwiched
zeros
All leading zeros are NOT significant –
they are merely place holders
All trailing zeros (zeros after a
nonzero digits) & to the right of
decimal point are ALWAYS
significantAll trailing zeros for measured
values less than one (<1) are
significant
All zeros for values greater than 1
(>1) and without decimal are NOT
All digits represented in the coefficient
portion using scientific notation are
significant