Dire Dawa University

Collage of Natural and Computational Science

Department of Physics
Course: General Physics (Phys1011)

Instructor’s: Alemu B. (MSc in Nuclear Physics)

Dire Dawa, Ethiopia

2014 E.C
 CHAPTER ONE
PRELIMINARIES
Physics deals with matter in relation to energy and the accurate
measurement of natural phenomenon.
Measurement consists of the comparison of an unknown quantity
with a known fixed quantity.
Measurement is the act of comparing a physical quantity with a
certain standard. The quantity used as the standard of measurement is
called “unit”.
1.1. Physical Quantities and Measurement
Physical quantity is a quantifiable or assignable property ascribed
to a particular phenomenon or body.
 1.1.1 Physical quantities
A. Basic Physical Quantities
Basic quantities are the quantities which cannot be expressed in terms of any
other physical quantity.
B. Derived Physical Quantities
Derived quantities are quantities that can be expressed in terms of fundamental
quantities.
There is a set of limited number of physical quantities of fundamental
importance from which all other possible quantities can be derived. all physical
quantities can be expressed as combinations of only seven basic physical
quantities.
Measurements of physical quantities are expressed in terms of units, which are
standardized values.
 1.1.2. SI Units: Basic and Derived Units
Table 1.1: Basic quantities and their SI units

Table 1.2: Derived quantities, their SI units and dimensions

 1.1.3 Conversion of Units
Measurements of physical quantities are expressed in terms of units, which
are standardized values. To convert a quantity from one unit to another,
multiply by conversions factor.
Table 1.3: Unit conversion of basic quantities

Examples: Length 0.02in can be converted into SI unit in meters

Solution: 0.02in=0.02x0.0254m=0.000508m=5.08x10-4m=0.508mm=508µm.
1.2 Uncertainty in Measurement and Significant Digits
Measurements are always uncertain, but by designing a better and
better experiment we can improve the uncertainty without limits.
The art of estimating these deviations should probably be called
uncertainty analysis.
Uncertainty gives the range of possible values of the measure and,
which covers the true value of the measure.
Thus uncertainty characterizes the spread of measurement results.
All measurements always have some uncertainty. We refer to the
uncertainty as the error in the measurement. Errors fall into two
categories:
1. Systematic Error - errors resulting from measuring devices being
out of calibration. Such measurements will be consistently too small
or too large. These errors can be eliminated by pre-calibrating against
a known, trusted standard.

2. Random Errors - errors resulting in the fluctuation of

measurements of the same quantity about the average. The
measurements are equally probable of being too large or too small.
These errors generally result from the fineness of scale division of a
measuring device.
There is a statistical method for calculating random uncertainties in
measurements.
1. Uncertainty in a scale measuring device is equal to the smallest
increment divided by 2.

2. Uncertainty in a digital measuring device is equal to the smallest

increment.
For example, if we measure a length of 5.7cm with a meter stick, this
implies that the length can be anywhere in the range 5.65 cm ≤ L ≤
5.75 cm. Thus, L =5.7cm measured with a meter stick implies an
uncertainty of 0.05 cm.
A common rule of thumb is to take one-half the unit of the last
decimal place in a measurement to obtain the uncertainty. In general,
any measurement can be stated in the following preferred form:
 1.2.1. Significant digits
Whenever you make a measurement, the number of meaningful digits
that you write down implies the error in the measurement .
For example if you say that the length of an object is 0.428m, you
imply an uncertainty of about 0.001m.
Rules for significant digits:
Rule 1: When approximate numbers are multiplied or divided, the
number of significant digits in the final answer is the same as the
number of significant digits in the least accurate of the factors.
 1.2.1. Significant digits
Whenever you make a measurement, the number of meaningful digits
that you write down implies the error in the measurement .
For example if you say that the length of an object is 0.428m, you
imply an uncertainty of about 0.001m.
Rules for significant digits:
Rule 1: When approximate numbers are multiplied or divided, the
number of significant digits in the final answer is the same as the
number of significant digits in the least accurate of the factors.

Answer 7.0N/m2
Rule 2: When approximate numbers are added or subtracted, the number
of significant digits should equal the smallest number of decimal places of
any term in the sum or difference.
Example: 9.65 cm + 8.4 cm - 2.89 cm = 15.16 cm
In general to determine significant digits in a given number
1. All non-zero numbers are significant.
2. Zeros within a numbers are always significant.
3. Zeros that do nothing but set the decimal point are not significant. Both
0.000098 and 0.98 contain two significant figures.
4. Zeros that aren‘t needed to hold the decimal point are significant. For
example, 4.00 has three significant figures.
5. Zeros that follow a number may be significant.
Rule 2: When approximate numbers are added or subtracted, the number
of significant digits should equal the smallest number of decimal places of
any term in the sum or difference.
Example: 9.65 cm + 8.4 cm - 2.89 cm = 15.16 cm Answer 15.2cm
In general to determine significant digits in a given number
1. All non-zero numbers are significant.
2. Zeros within a numbers are always significant.
3. Zeros that do nothing but set the decimal point are not significant. Both
0.000098 and 0.98 contain two significant figures.
4. Zeros that aren‘t needed to hold the decimal point are significant. For
example, 4.00 has three significant figures.
5. Zeros that follow a number may be significant.
A vector changes if its magnitude or direction or if both magnitude
and direction change.
A vector may be multiplied by a pure number or by a scalar.
Multiplication by a pure number merely changes the magnitude of the
vector. If the number is negative, the direction is reversed. When a
vector is multiplied by a scalar, the new vector also becomes a
different physical quantity.
1.3.2. Vector Addition
A single vector that is obtained by adding two or more vectors is
called resultant vector and it is obtained using the following two
methods
A. Graphical method of vector addition
Graphically vectors can be added by joining their head to tail and in
any order their resultant vector is the vector drawn from the tail of the
first vector to the head of the last vector. In figure 1 below show the
resultant vector R = A + B + C is the vector that completes the
polygon.
Head-to-tail method of vector addition. Geometry shows that
B. Parallelogram law of vector addition
The parallelogram law states that the resultant R of two vectors A and B is
the diagonal of the parallelogram for which the two vectors A and B
becomes adjacent sides. All three vectors A, B and R are concurrent as
shown in Figure 2.
A and B are also called the components of R. The magnitude of the
diagonal (resultant vector) is obtained using cosine law and direction
(i.e. the angle that the diagonal vector makes with the sides) is
obtained using the sine law. Applying cosine and sine laws for the
triangle formed by the two vectors:
 1.3.3. Components of Vector
Considering Figure 3 below, components of the given vector A are
obtained by applying the trigonometric functions of sine and cosine.

The components Ax and Ay can be added to give back A as their

resultant. A = Ax+ Ay
Because Ax and Ay are perpendicular to each other, the magnitude of
their resultant vector is obtained using Pythagoras theorem.
Similarly, any three dimensional vector A can be written as the sum
of its x, y and z components. A = Ax + Ay + Az And its magnitude
becomes

The direction angles that this vector makes with the three axes, is
given by the direction of cosines.
 1.4. Unit Vector
A unit vector is a vector that has magnitude of one and it is
dimensionless and its sole purpose is to point a given vector in
specified direction. It is usually denoted with a hat.

There is a special set of three unit vectors that are exceptionally

useful for problems involving vectors namely the Cartesian
coordinate axis unit vectors. For a three dimensional x, y and z
coordinate system, the unit vector î pointing in the +x direction, the
unit vector ĵ pointing in the +y direction and the unit vector k̂
pointing in the +z direction.
Any vector can be expressed in terms of unit vectors. Consider, for
instance, a vector A with components Ax, Ay and Az. The vector
formed by the product Axi has magnitude │Ax│ in the +x direction.
This means that Axi is the x-component of vector A. Similarly, Ayj is
the y-component of vector A and, Azk is the z-component vector of A.
Thus A can be expressed as

1.4.1. Vector addition in Unit Vector Notation