| Even ignoring the part where you are measuring past the precision of the measuring tool, you're still wrong. Making multiple measurements and then averaging them does not give you more precision just because you get a non integer (in this example) number. It does not bestow you with more precision. Why you do multiple measurements is because as humans we are imprecise. Any engineer, wood worker, whatever knows the saying "measure twice, cut once". In your example, the thing you are measuring could well be exactly 52.0000...cm. If you don't believe me I seriously want you to ask ANY physicist. They can even be an undergraduate (assuming they aren't a freshman) and they should know this. We even use this to figure out what we should spend money on. We can process these errors and determine which measuring device needs more certainty and buy that new device. This is WHY we have very precise devices. With your method, we could theoretically get measurements to nanometer levels. I can tell you, I would much rather spend 15 minutes making a hundred measurements than spending thousands of dollars on a laser and equipment needed to make precise measurements down to the nm level. To sum up: > take enough of them and you can get closer to the actual length which may be 51.55345 NO! This is just dead wrong. It'd be right if you said 51 or 52. > that you would never have been able to measure anyway without a caliper No! This is why we have calipers! > if you remove the tenth of millimeters, you lose information. Not if you didn't have that information in the first place. >What's wrong is not the number Yes it is. I can only assume: 1) You are trolling, 2) You are really thick headed, and/or 3) You've never taken a physics class. I'm not saying anything here that isn't easily verifiable. I have others backing me up. So if you have no interest in learning, then there is no point for me to continue. |