Experiment with angular acceleration

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SUMMARY

This discussion centers on calculating the angular acceleration of a rotating cylinder in a classical mechanics experiment. The user successfully averaged angular accelerations weighted by their uncertainties but seeks clarification on determining the uncertainty of the estimated angular acceleration. The reference to mean squared error from Wikipedia suggests a method for calculating this uncertainty, which is essential for accurate results in experimental physics.

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  • Basic proficiency in using mean squared error for uncertainty estimation.
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I'm not sure if this goes in there since it's a question about an experiment involving classical mechanics.
So I've done an experiment where I have determined for a rotating cylinder, its angular acceleration as I let a weight attached to it drop. Now each of these angular accelerations have an uncertainty, and I want to figure out the best estimation for the angular acceleration. What I did was to make an average over the angular acceleration weighted over their uncertainties. This is correct right? - I'm pretty sure, that's how it's done.
My problem is however, that I now don't know how to figure out the uncertainty for this estimated angular acceleration - how do I do that?
 
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Now each of these angular accelerations have an uncertainty, and I want to figure out the best estimation for the angular acceleration.

After this, I don't know what your explanation(s) means.

one approach:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_squared_error
 

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