Your 'timer program' report has been received. Scroll down through the document to see any comments I might have inserted, and my final comment at the end.
** Your General Comment **
** Describe what you see on your first 10 clicks **
I pressed on the Click to Time Event button and this is what I saw:
1 13.89063 13.89063
2 14.15625 .265625
3 14.4375 .28125
4 14.71875 .28125
5 15 .28125
6 15.3125 .3125
7 15.57813 .265625
8 15.82813 .25
9 16.07813 .25
10 16.34375 .265625
** Your TIMER data from 20 fast clicks **
1 1.59375 1.59375
2 1.78125 .1875
3 1.953125 .171875
4 2.125 .171875
5 2.328125 .203125
6 2.484375 .15625
7 2.671875 .1875
8 2.859375 .1875
9 3.015625 .15625
10 3.21875 .203125
11 3.40625 .1875
12 3.609375 .203125
13 3.8125 .203125
14 3.984375 .171875
15 4.15625 .171875
16 4.328125 .171875
17 4.53125 .203125
18 4.703125 .171875
19 4.890625 .1875
20 5.328125 .4375
** Your average time interval for 20 time intervals **
.176970
I could not figure out how to do it in a more simple way than adding the 20 numbers and dividing by 20, so that is how I found my average (Add the 20 and divide by 20)
Alternatively subtract the first clock time from the last and divide by 19. Note that you had only 19 intervals, so your average is a little higher than your result.
Also that .4375 seconds is pretty clearly the result of a missed click, so shouldn't be included in the analysis.
** Your frequency distribution for the 20 time intervals (interval, number of times it was observed) **
.15625, 2
.17185, 6
.1875, 5
.203125, 5
.4375, 1
** Your general comment to this point **
I am assuming that we are disregarding the first number since it is most likely how long it took the user to press the button after they opened the program and this number, in turn, is significantly larger than the others.
** Why did you observe only certain time intervals? **
I wouldn't say the TIMER program is flawed or useless. Perhaps the TIMER program reports numbers to the closest landmark number that is programmed into it. For example, an actual reading of .18752 would be .1875 since the program is not capable of timing to the accurate millisecond. We would need a very large program to do this.
** What did you see when you looked at the differences between time successive time intervals? **
It seems like the TIMER program is pretty accurate as it calculates to five places after the decimal. It also appears that the user is pretty consistent, but I believe this proves my theory that the TIMER has built in points that it rounds to because no human could be that consistent.
** Your time intervals for 7 complete breaths: **
5.265625
5.4375
5.75
5.609375
5.03125
5.875
5.84375
5.59375
5.140625
** Your general comment to this point: **
I just jogged for a long time, so my results are probably not what my normal pace would be.
** Why did you rarely, if ever, observe that same time interval twice? **
Breathing, unlike clicking at a rapid rate, is a longer process which means that the numbers will be large. I believe the TIMER program is able to more accurately display larger data than small, minute data. This data was above 5 seconds while the clicking data was under .2 seconds--a significant difference.
** Do you think this program is accurate to .1 or .01 ... **
d
I think this because in the clicking exercise, it was able to distinguish between .01563 and .015625, so this would imply that it is accurate to the .0001 second.
** Copy of a few lines of your spreadsheet from the TIMER program. **
.17185, 6
.1875, 5
.203125, 5
.4375, 1
** **
This exercise took me about 20 minutes to complete.
** **
I think this style of teaching is very beneficial because in our age of technology, exposing students like me to computer programs is a very valuable tool. If we can learn about computer programs and related characteristics of programs along with physics, I am very optimistic about the future!
&#This looks good. See my notes. Let me know if you have any questions. &#