A steel ball is released at rest at the top of a tall glass cylinder filled with glycerine
PHYSICS · Subjective · Fermi University Physics · Scientific Practice & Experimental Methods · Designing and running experiments · Designing and running experiments
Measurement and Method, Ch Running it: troubleshooting, the systematics hunt, safety and the record
Problem
A steel ball is released at rest at the top of a tall glass cylinder filled with glycerine. Once it reaches terminal velocity it is timed as it falls between two marked lines on the cylinder, and the time is used with the ball's diameter and density to find the fluid's viscosity from Stokes' law. Build a systematics list for this apparatus, naming one suspect from each of the seven families given: scale, zero, environment, timing, geometry, analysis, selection. For each, state in one sentence what could bias the measured viscosity.