General Chemistry 1

 At the end of the lesson, you should be able

to:
1. Discuss the need and describe the result of
a measurement, in general;
2. Differentiate between the accuracy and
precision of a measurement;
3. Point out possible sources of errors in a
measurement; and
4. Carry out a measurement and report results
correctly;
 Why is there a need to use a
common unit for measurement?
You make a measurement every time you
 measure your height
 read your watch
 take your temperature
In chemistry we
 measure quantities
 do experiments
 calculate results
 use numbers to report measurements
 compare results to standards
 A measuring tool is used to compare
some dimension of an object to a
standard.

 An electronic balance is the

measuring tool used to determine
the mass of an object
 A measured quantity is usually written
as a number with an appropriate unit.
 In a measurement, you need units and
you need to be consistent.
 Hence, you need a system.

 What is the measurement system adopted in

scientific measurements that is agreed upon and
is used by all scientists anywhere and all the
time?
 In 1960, the General Conference of
Weights and Measures adopted the
International System of units (or SI),
which is a particular choice of metric
units.
 This system has seven SI base units,
the SI units from which all others can
be derived.
 Système International d’Unités (SI
System of Units)
 International System of Units
 international decimal system of
weights and measures derived from
and extending the metric system of
units
 Simple and convenient to use since all
units are based in multiples of 10
Note: All other units
are derived from
these base units.
 Chemists often deal with numbers that
are either extremely large or extremely
small.
 For example, in 1 g of the element
hydrogen there are roughly
602,200,000,000,000,000,000,000
hydrogen atoms.
 Each hydrogen atom has a mass of
only
0.00000000000000000000000166 g

 These numbers are cumbersome to

handle, and it is easy to make mistakes
when using them in arithmetic
computations.
 Consider the following multiplication:
0.0000000056 × 0.00000000048 =
0.000000000000000002688
 Consequently, when working with very
large and very small numbers, we use a
system called scientific notation.
 Regardless of their magnitude, all
numbers can be expressed in the form
N × 10n
 where N is a number between 1 and 10
and n, the exponent, is a positive or
negative integer (whole number).
 Any number expressed in this way is said
to be written in scientific notation.
 Express 568.762 in scientific notation:
568.762 = 5.68762 × 102
 Express 0.00000772 in scientific
notation:
 0.00000772 = 7.72 × 10–6
  Accuracy refers to the proximity of a
measurement to the true value of a
quantity.
 Precision refers to the proximity of
several measurements to each other
(Precision relates to the uncertainty of
a measurement).

For a measured quantity, we can generally improve its accuracy

by making more measurements