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Re: [Phys-l] ivory windmills

That's certainly what I would say. Yesterday I took my students to task for giving answers like "1,911,741 years" to the question "How long would you have to pedal a bike at full throttle to lose 1 kg assuming that you generate 1/2 hp of useful power and your body is about 25% efficient at converting stored energy to useful work." I don't feel the least bit guilty about having done so. Quite the contrary, I would feel remiss in my instructional duties to allow them to continue embarrassing themselves in public that way.

John Mallinckrodt
Cal Poly Pomona

On Apr 12, 2012, at 9:11 AM, Robert Cohen wrote:

I don't disagree with the main point but it seems to me that the sig fig examples serve to illustrate the problems with rounding intermediate steps, not the use of sig figs at the end. Am I mistaken?

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