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Significant Figures Overview

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An overview of the rules of Significant Figures.

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a professor date let's talk sig figs knows a lot about the Science Guy Siri can you explain humans have a need to communicate their experiences with one another how far apart are two cities when did something happen and how long before it happens again this is why we developed units of measurement some correlate with natural phenomena like a day or a year which are based on the motion of the Earth but many are arbitrary like most units of length and when we participate in measurement we have to be aware of some limitations for example how many people are in this crowd can we say 10,000 what about 10400 or 10472 have to be careful not to make an estimate that is more precise than are measuring abilities allow so when we use measuring devices we only estimate 1 digit further than the level of precision inherent in the instrument here we could estimate two points 3 cm but not to point 33481 we do not have access to that level of precision so any measurement will have a certain amount of significant figures sig figs associated with it display how precise it is here are the rules for determining how many sig figs are in a value one any digit that's not zero is significant two zeros in between other non-zero digits are three leading zeros ones that come before the first non-zero digit are not significant and for trailing zeros the ones that come after the last non-zero digit are only significant if they are. small zeros so 10,000 only has one significant figure which really means it's about 10,000 not exactly 10,000 if we bring back that same crowd and one more person shows up can we estimate 10001 no because I've only estimated to one Sig fig so anything from 9500 to 10499 would round to our estimate of 10,000 when we do calculations we have to pay attention to the number of sig figs if we are adding or subtracting are ants we'll have as many decimal places as the value with the least number of decimal places if we are multiplying or dividing our answer will have as many sig figs as the value with the least number of sig figs whatever our answer is we will have to round up or down at the appropriate digit 5 or higher means Round Up 4 or below means round down let's check comprehension thanks for watching guys subscribe to my channel for more tutorials I always feel free to email me Professor Dave explains at gmail.com

Uploaded by Shawn Mize.

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