Units, Physical Quantities, Measurement, Errors and

Uncertainties, Graphical Presentation, and Linear Fitting

of Data
LEXTER C. SUPNET
Subject Teacher
General Physics 1
Ilocos Sur National High School (STEM Strand)
The learners demonstrate an understanding of:
• the effect of instruments on measurements;
• uncertainties and deviations in measurement;
• sources and types of error; accuracy versus precision;
• uncertainty of derived quantities;
• error bars; and, graphical analysis: linear fitting and
• transformation of functional dependence to linear form.

Content Standards
Physics has shaped the world into what it is
today.
“You can’t love what you do not
appreciate.
You cannot appreciate what
you do not understand.
And, you will not understand
what you do not KNOW.”
PART 1: PHYSICAL QUANTITIES
 • Physic is an Experimental Science

• Experiments are performed to test

Hypotheses

• Conclusions from experiments are

derived from measurements

Importance of Measurements
Ancient Measurements
Physical quantity would make sense to everyone
when compared to a reference standard

Physical Quantity
 From the French
Le Systeme
International d’
Unites.
 Used in almost all
parts of the world
as agreed by the
General
Conference on
Weights and
Measures

International System of Units

(SI) a.k.a. metric system
• The SI unit for length.
• One meter is the length of path travelled by
light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 a
second.

Meter (m)
• The SI unit for mass.
• One kilogram is the mass of the standard
platinum-iridium cylinder

Kilogram (kg)
Project Avogadro: The quest for redefining
the KILOGRAM

Kilogram (kg)
• The SI unit for time.
• One second is the duration of 9, 192, 631, 770 periods of
the radiation corresponding to the transition between two
hyperfine levels of the ground state of cesium-133 atoms.

Second (s)
• The SI unit for temperature.
• One Kelvin is the fraction of 1/273.16 of the triple point
of water.

Kelvin (K)
• The SI unit for electric current.
• One ampere is the constant current which, if maintained
in two straight parallel conductors of infinite length, of
negligible circular cross section and placed one meter
apart in a vacuum, would produce between these
conductors a force equal to 2x10-7 Newtons per meter of
length

Ampere (A)
• The SI unit for luminous intensity.
• One candela is the luminous intensity in a given direction
of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of
frequency 540 x 1012 Hertz and that has a radiant
intensity in that direction of (1/683) watt per steradian.

Candela (cd)
• The SI unit for amount of substance.
• One mole is the amount of substance that contains as
many as elementary entities as there are atoms in 0.012
kg of carbon-12.

Mole (mol)
SI Prefixes
The Imperial & US System
• What are some properties for an object to be
called a standard?
• Give an example of derived quantities and their
corresponding units.
• The human brain is a supercomputer. It can store
100 trillion bits of information. Write that
number and express it by adding prefix to the
word bit.

Checkpoint!
Sample Problem 1
Nanotechnology is the term that embraces the use of
materials of size in the order of nanometer. What is 2.0
nanometers in:
a) meters and
b) centimeters?

Conversion of Units
Sample Problem 2
The unit angstrom, symbolized by Å, is named after Anders
J. Angstrom. Given that 1 Å = 0.1nm, what is 1 Å in
a) cm
b) m, and
c) mm?

Conversion of Units
A snail moves 1.0 cm every 20 seconds.
What is this in inches per second?

In performing the conversion, we did two things. We identified the number of

significant figures and then rounded off the final answer to retain this number of
figures. For convenience, the final answer is rewritten in scientific notation.

Sample Problem 3
• *The number of significant figures refers to all digits to
the left of the decimal point (except zeroes after the last
non-zero digit) and all digits to the right of the decimal
point (including all zeroes).

• *Scientific notation is also called the “powers-of-ten

notation”. This allows one to write only the significant
figures multiplied to 10 with the appropriate power. As a
shorthand notation, we therefore use only one digit before
the decimal point with the rest of the significant figures
written after the decimal point.

Important!
Perform the following conversions using the correct number
of significant figures in scientific notation:
1. A jeepney tried to overtake a car. The jeepney moves at
40 km/hour: convert this to the British system (feet per
second)?
2. It takes about 8.0 minutes for light to travel from the sun
to the earth. How far is the sun from the earth (in meters, in
feet)?

Exercise
PART 2: MEASUREMENT
UNCERTAINTIES
VECTORS
The learners shall be able to:
1. Differentiate vector and scalar quantities
(STEM_GP12EU-Ia-8)
2. Perform addition of vectors (STEM_GP12EU-Ia-9)
3. Rewrite a vector in component form
(STEM_GP12EU-Ia-10)
4. Calculate directions and magnitudes of vectors
(STEM_GP12EU-Ia-11)

Learning Competencies
SCALAR VECTORS
Treasure Hunting