A home-lab to study uncertainties using smartphone sensors and determine the optimal number of measurements

Abstract

We present a home-lab experimental activity, successfully proposed to our students during covid19 pandemic, based on state-of-the-art technologies to teach error analysis and uncertainties to science and engineering students. In the last decade the appearance of smartphones considerably affected our daily life. Thanks to their built-in sensors, this revolution has impacted in many areas and, in particular, the educational field. Here we show how to use smartphone sensors to teach fundamental concepts for science students such as any measurement is useless unless a confidence interval is specified or how to determine if a result agrees with a model, or to discern a new phenomenon from others already known. We explain how to obtain and analyse experimental fluctuations and discuss in relation with the Gaussian distribution. In another application we show how to determine the optimal number of measurements as a function of the standard error and the digital resolution of a given sensor.