Hi.
As someone has stated, students think of error as mistakes. I emphasize uncertainty, and often pair that word with error. They hear me say and ask about sources of uncertainty a lot more than they hear me ask about error.
I ask my students to address sources of uncertainty for almost all of their labs. I do not ask them to do calculations for all of them. I do ask them to address what are some sources of uncertainty and how would they affect your data?
At the beginning of the year I ask them how they could reduce the uncertainty of the lab they just finished. After a couple of weeks I ask them to start thinking about that before they conduct the experiment. Then they can include that in their discussion of uncertainties.
We don't often calculate uncertainties, but they get a small taste.
With freshman, we do use a method to find the uncertainty of a three beam balance, meterstick, and graduate cylinder. They rotate through and find the mass, length, and volume of a set of standard objects. We get a couple of classroom sets of data (close to 60 measurements). Find the average, max and min. We throw out any unrealistically large or small values. We claim our uncertainty is the difference btn the average and the max (or min, whichever is larger). Then we can discuss if things have definitely different, possibly the same mass, length, volume, or density values.
I do state that there are other ways to determine uncertainty, and that this might not be the preferred method for folks everywhere. We also discuss that electronic devices tend to have an uncertainty stated in their literature.
It works well for high school freshman.
I agree with an earlier statement. Human error isn't acceptable. Also, students often want to state that uncertainty might be due to an error in calculations. I tell them that is a mistake, not an uncertainty. Fix the mistake. While there may be some instances where these mistakes are hard to find, in high school, less than 5 minutes will typically find any mistake made in a calculation.
Paul Lulai
Physics Teacher
St Anthony Village S.H.
3303 33rd Ave NE
St Anthony Village, MN 55418