Friedrich Gausse, the Caliper, and the Rice Grains

In our lab activity for today, we worked on rice. Oops! If you think we did something biological work for today, you are definitely wrong. We still did physics! In our lesson on Gaussian distribution, our professors handed us a set of rice grains for us to measure and represent the diameter and length of a typical rice grain. We used some devices that were not so familiar with us yet: the micrometer caliper and the vernier caliper. These devices are used in measuring lengths that are in a micrometer scale and commonly cannot be measurable in an accurate manner by a typical ruler. He taught us first how to use the said devices and we started measuring the rice grains one at a time. Using the micrometer caliper in measuring the diameter of rice grains is manageable enough for us but not the length. The tip of the rice just slipped off the grip of the caliper so we resorted to using a ruler instead. Using the said device meant some changes in the uncertainty of our measurement since the two devices have different level of accuracy.

In determining the dimensions of a typical rice, we are going to use three different orders of approximation such as the first order of approximation, second order of approximation and the third order of approximation. The number of the samples utilized determines what order of approximation is used. For the first order of approximation, only a single sample was used. For the second order of approximation, there were only 10 samples. For the third order of approximation there were 100 rice samples used. We are to asses which of the three order of approximation is reliable enough in determining the dimensions of a typical rice grain. And we can do it by analyzing the graphical distribution of the lengths and diameters or rice samples.