- #1
Orha
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Homework Statement
I did a lab this week measuring periods of swings of a simple pendulum. We need to curve fit the equation T=k*l^n and we got ln(T)=n*ln(l)+ln(k), and we need to plot the data we collected into the linear graph, meaning out y axes is ln(T) and our x axes is ln(l). So far all is well and good, I took ln's of all my data and ploted it into the graph which is more or less linear.
My problem is that my errors are so small, one of them is 0.5*10^(-3) (=0.0005), that when I ln it I get -7.6. At the same time when I ln my data I get values between -0.05 and -0.8. looking at the ln graph I understand why this happens, but it doesn't make sense that my errors would be so unproportionate to my values (and much larger than them), and I am not sure it makes sense to have a negative error, does it? Does having a negative error have any significance? Because in my head all it does is change the signs from "value +- negative error" to "value -+ positive error") which would mean that in this case I have an error of 7.6 on a value that is 0.8 which again, makes no sense..
Do I just keep the errors as they were before?
I am sure I am doing something wrong, or at least understanding the results wrong, but I have no idea what I am suppose to do..
Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks for your time!
Homework Equations
Non really, I changed T=k*l^n to ln(T)=n*ln(l)+ln(k) and am trying to fit the errors..
The Attempt at a Solution
I had a thought that maybe I need to do the opposite, and put my errors to an exponent, but I couldn't really understand why that would be and in any case that didn't give me good results either as the error valuse I got were close to 1 which is still a problem..