A teacher measures and records her own mass to an accuracy of better than percent. Which of the following is most likely the mass that she recorded?
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The correct answer is . This question is intended to assess your knowledge of realistic values for physical quantities as well as an understanding of experimental error and significant figures. Only
and
are likely masses for an adult human. (If you need to compare the choices in pounds to see this,
is approximately
pounds.) When recording measurements, it is assumed that there is some measurement error in the last digit recorded. For both possible values for the teacher's weight,
percent is about
. Therefore, a mass recorded to better than this accuracy will indicate tenths of a kilogram.