Guest Posted January 17, 2006 Share Posted January 17, 2006 Im writing up my lab report, and one this they love over here is for you to do long and tedious error analysis. Anyway, basically I have a set of angles (x), all with independent errors on (0.10 degree) (dx) and i'm asked to take the sin of these angles (degrees, not radians). What do I do to the error? I have a feeling I have to differentiate sinx, and work out cosx (where x is the angle) and times it by dx (error in angle) to determine dz (error in sinx), however this is giving me very large error bars :s Any help would be GREATLY appreciated! Thanks :) Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dreamz Veteran Posted January 17, 2006 Veteran Share Posted January 17, 2006 y = sin x you want to find out the effect on y due to an uncertainty in x. think of it as a rate of change in x. dy/dx = cos x dy = dx*cos x plug in the value of x at a particular point and the uncertainty in your measurement, and you get the estimated error. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 17, 2006 Share Posted January 17, 2006 That's what I did but the error abrs are pretty big! Ah well, suppose that's just our poor measurements! Thanks anyway :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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