1.2: Significant Figures
- Page ID
- 367718
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In addition to a number and unit, it is also important to consider significant figures when reporting or reading a measurement. Significant figures tell us something about the precision with which a measurement was made. Precision can be very important in some situations, so we like to have a way of knowing how precise a particular measurement was. For example, a parent may pour a glass of water for their child and also pour them some medication. Hopefully the parent is using more precision when measuring the medication compared to measuring the water! Significant figures are how we keep track of this kind of precision in science. We will first discuss how to read the significant figures on a measurement correctly. Then we will discuss how to correctly report the significant figures after perform mathematical operations involving measured numbers.