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Quick check from College Physics, 1.3 Accuracy, Precision, and Significant Figures
A high school track coach has just purchased a new stopwatch. The stopwatch manual states that the stopwatch has an uncertainty of ±0.05 s. The team's top sprinter clocked a 100 meter sprint at 12.04 seconds last week and at 11.96 seconds this week. Can we conclude that this week's time was faster?
Answer it in your own words before you look.
No, the uncertainty in the stopwatch is too great to effectively differentiate between the sprint times.
How did it go?