Measurement and Significant Figures

When we take a measurement or make a calculation, how many digits do we use? There's rules, friend! You must obey the sig figs. Don't worry, learn all about them in this clip, and you'll be the coolest kid on the block.

Check out "Is This Wi-Fi Organic?", my book on disarming pseudoscience!

[yeh.]

I'm in year 11, and we have so far had 4 weeks of term, in chemistry class I've learnt next to nothing, that's from 4 weeks! In just half an hour I'm almost learnt all of what has been taught for the whole 4 weeks, thank you very much Prof. Dave!

[senaitbekele]

in case anyone here is unable to go to college and is trying to self-teach themselves college-level chemistry, his videos provide you with everything you need. I'm currently in college and 90% of the curriculum is based off of his channel and his vids. i think im going to drop out because im paying tuition to a college that assigns his FREE youtube vids as homework. It is 100% possible to self teach yourself chemistry, education is truly everywhere and in our faces, its up to us to use it.

[metarasouli]

I've started chemistry learning in detail by following your practical courses. This channel provides essential information for students and other enthusiastic readers to a better understanding of general aspects of chemistry.

[princestevenii.]

I'm in the first grade of high school, and you are the first and only person that got me interested in chemistry. I was always interested in physics and biology, but not this. Thank you Dave, you just made me feel smarter.

[TomPark]

Much clearer than my university level physics textbook.

[dlemmuh]

If no one can see the humor in Jesus teaching chemistry, then I don't know what to say man.

[marianiskandar]

I'm going to be using your videos all the time in my class! These set of videos are so helpful!!! Thank you! :)

[sonyduck]

lawl my science teacher showed us this, and we all exploded with laughter at your intro xD

[eydreiandioquino]

Got my finals grade in college for the first semester, thank you Prof. Dave, I passed my chemistry.

[weeping_wisterias]

Found this for a chem lab and lemme just say
*SCIENCE JESUS*

[narimancharkie]

Thank you so much professor :)! the checking comprehension part is awesome.

[shovel]

Holy moly, I thought I understood sig figs, but you explained it way better than my chemistry teacher in a tenth of the time. I found you trough your debunking content and I'm glad I did. I just started the general chemistry series and I can already tell that school is about to get a lot easier. Thank you, Dave.

[hughcallis]

I have such a weird situation being an adult pursuing astrophysics and understanding a lot of science but not really the fundamentals of chemistry at all 😅 throughout grade school we kept having science teachers leave in the middle of teaching specific curriculum to my class in particular, then they’d be replaced with a new science teacher who would start with a different subject in science. I loved learning science but it was hard to be taught the fundamentals of it when we never fully covered topics. I also have trouble comprehending the way some teachers explain things as well, but I could understand this very clearly. I really liked the learning check and even though it’s intended for a class I was able to go back and reanalyze the rules for identifying sig figs. At first I was a bit confused but it really helped to have control over the video to repeat things if I didn’t get it the first time. Thank you so much for what you do, my science teacher in high school actually stayed and he taught us what he could but my class was already pretty far behind. I wanted to score better on the ACT and even asked him if he could help me prepare but he had to explain that he isn’t even teaching the curriculum, the curriculum is in AP classes. I didn’t even make benchmark. He did also explain that many public schools have more of a priority to make money than to actually teach so they’ve let kids go to the next grade who weren’t ready, they could only send a specific amount of students to special needs schools (Me having adhd, if I couldn’t focus I was just thrown in the hall and never given real solutions to my educational needs), and they wouldn’t do anything about disruptive behaviors just send kids to the hall for that too since they couldn’t give a lot of kids detention due to the school board chewing the staff out over it despite it literally being a behavioural issue. I don’t at all believe our government actually advocates for education, I’m very disappointed with the way my early education was handled. But again, I’m very grateful to have this information presented to me for free in a way that allows me to sit down and listen.

[namratavaswani]

In school we were taught that when you count something then the number has infinite significant figures like 20 books can be Books

[nathanh]

One rarely mentioned rule is that when multiplying by an integer where no decimals are possible, such as counting, the integer has infinite sig figs. This reconciles the discrepancy that comes from sig fig rules of adding 5 identical values versus multiplying the identical value by 5.

[sunchan]

Hi there, how do we determine the sig fig of uncertainty, standard devaition, relative standard deviation and standard error in analytical chemistry? thank you very much

[TheMornebrink]

This is probably the most useful youtube channel around.

[Lulucooldog]

Hi just want to say thank you for making those videos. They are super helpful when I need to refresh my memory of some old knowledge I learned from school a long time ago. Also I learned all this in Chinese and usually have no idea what the English equivalents are. Your videos especially illustrations help me to pair them up. Thanks!

[lukekitchens]

Great resource for my students. Thanks

[yoshinara]

I was taught that if 5 is preceeded by an even number, round down (1.25 -> 1.2). If it’s preceeded by an odd number, round up (1.15 -> 1.2). The theory is that since 5 is exactly halfway between 0 and 10, it should be rounded up half the time and down the other half, so in the long run it will balance out. Otherwise, when rounding a large number of numbers the result will be biased if 5 is always rounded one way.

which is correct?