Here's my physics lab report, in short. Topic: Sources of experimental errors.
There is a large difference between the change in potential energy and kinetic energy of the collision, even though we expected a conservation of energy. This discrepancy can probably be attributed to the following sources of error inherent in our experiment. Firstly, the experimenter woke up really late this morning, so late in fact that he did not even have time to shower in order to catch the next available bus so as not to miss too much of his civilization class. So late in fact that he totally forgot that it was going to snow today. As a result, his mind is still in a blur as of now, and he is in a rather dazed state yet. Hence errors due to human reaction time are greatly magnified due to this slowing down of his senses and ability for coordination. This results in a slow reaction time when taking time intervals. Secondly, the experimenter does not see the need to repeat measurements over and over again to take the mean. In fact, he feels that one, or at most 2 sets of readings, are necessary. This requirement to perform 5 sets of measurements each time results in much pent-up frustration within him, so that each set of measurement gets progressively more inaccurate due to the mental unwillingness to perform the task at hand. Thirdly, the experimenter has not eaten breakfast nor lunch yet, in spite it being well into the afternoon now. Hence the lack of glucose flow to his brain severely impedes his ability to make a reasoned judgement on which measurements to take. Hence the rather uncoordinated mess in front of you, the TA. Fourthy, its snowing outside, but the experimenter totally forgot that it was gonna be 0 degrees today. Hence he wore his usual hooded sweatshirt to school only, with the result that the numbness in his hands and body has spread to his mind, and he is unable to reason properly. But I suppose there has been too much errors dependent on the experimenter. I shall now focus on inherent errors due to the equipment used. Firstly, the experimenter has never heard of the manufacturer of the ICU unit, nor has he even used the software required for this certain experiment. Inherent faults in the ICU unit cannot be discounted for. Similarly, the programmer of the software may also have mistakenly written in some errors into the software resulting in it producing constant errors in our measurement. Since these people cannot be traced, nor the errors replicated on another day, I gather that our results suggest a conservation of mechanical energy, within the range of experimental errors.
Brilliant lab report, don't you people think? If only I were the TA, I would have given this top marks, for content, originality and guts. But of course I am not the TA, nor am I stupid enough to actually include this in my lab report today. But yay, the last physics lab of the quarter is over!!!!! Cancer biology next!
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