Week 3, starting Monday 16th October
All work should be completed in the session for which it is set. Work carried over for marking in the following week will only receive half the credit. Note that the session ends at 5:30pm, and work should be marked by this time. Please get each exercise marked as you finish it.
This week you should complete the following tasks:
In task 3 (error propagation) you apply the error propagation formulae to data satisfying different forms, i.e. linear, logarithmic and sine functions, from (a) a compound pendulum experiment, (b) a chemical reaction, (c) an X-ray scattering experiment. You will need to download the spreadsheet reaction_data.xls.
One of the major practical procedures discussed in the data analysis lectures is the least squares fitting of a straight line to a set of data points. In task 4 (least-squares fit) you will apply this procedure to some of the data from the previous exercise. You will need to download the spreadsheet Least_squares_fit.xls.