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SingaporePhysicsQuick questions
Measurement and Kinematics
Quick questions on Physical quantities and SI units: N(A)-Level Physics measurement
4short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What are prefixes?Show answer
A prefix is a short word put in front of a unit to make it bigger or smaller. They save us writing long strings of zeros. The ones you need are:
What is choosing an instrument for length?Show answer
Pick the instrument that matches the size and the precision you need:
What is choosing an instrument for time?Show answer
A stopwatch or digital timer measures time. For a short, repeating event such as a pendulum swing, time many swings and divide. This is because your reaction time when starting and stopping is a fixed error, and dividing a large total by the number of swings makes that error a much smaller fraction of each result.
What is parallax error?Show answer
Reading a scale from an angle gives a wrong value. Look straight on.
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