what would happen to the accuracy and precision of the measurement if the mass is measured to 10th of a gram instead of a thousandth of a gram. would the result be higher or lower than the true value.
It would be higher than the true value
When measuring the mass, accuracy refers to how close the measured value is to the true or accepted value, while precision refers to the level of consistency or reproducibility of the measurements.
If the mass is measured to the thousandth of a gram (0.001 g) and then changed to the tenth of a gram (0.1 g), the precision would decrease, but the accuracy would remain the same.
To understand why, let's consider an example. If you measure the mass of an object using both measurement levels (0.001 g and 0.1 g), let's say the true mass of the object is 2.000 g.
Using the thousandth of a gram measurement, you might get values like 1.999 g, 2.001 g, 1.996 g, etc. These measurements are more precise as they provide a greater level of detail.
However, if you switch to the tenth of a gram measurement, the values you might obtain would be 2.0 g, 2.1 g, 2.2 g, etc. While these measurements are less precise, they are still accurate since they are within a reasonable range of the true value.
So, when measuring to the tenth of a gram, the precision decreases as the measurements round off to the nearest tenth of a gram. However, the accuracy remains unaffected unless there is a systematic error present in the measurement technique.