What is Uncertainty Analysis?
Uncertainty can be described as that portion of the measurement beyond which we are not sure of its true value. Each time a measurement is taken (mass, volume length etc.) we rely upon a mechanical or visual point of reference in order to assign the appropriate value. These values, no matter how carefully they are obtained contain some degree of what is referred to as uncertainty. The Denver 300 balance used to obtain data for this experiment reads to 0.001g (1 mg). The true value could be as low as 0.0005g or as high as 0.0014g. The fourth decimal place (which cannot be read on this balance) causes us to be uncertain about the true value of the third decimal place. To account for this we assign an uncertainty to the balance reading obtained as 0.001g (e.g. 158.709 0.001g). Similarly a balance which reads 0.01g would have an assigned uncertainty of 0.01g. For volumetric (graduated cylinders, Mohr pipettes and burettes) and length measurements a general rule is to assign an uncertainty
