High School

If you do an experiment and find the temperature of boiling water to be 98.5 degrees Celsius, what is your percent error?

Answer :

Sure, I'd be happy to help you with that! Let's go through the steps to find the percent error for the observed boiling point of water.

### Step-by-Step Calculation:

1. Identify the actual (true) temperature and the observed temperature:
- The true boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius.
- The observed boiling point of water from the experiment is 98.5 degrees Celsius.

2. Calculate the absolute error:
- Absolute error = |True value - Observed value|
- Absolute error = |100 - 98.5|
- Absolute error = 1.5

3. Calculate the percent error:
- Percent error = (Absolute error / True value) × 100
- Percent error = (1.5 / 100) × 100
- Percent error = 1.5%

So, the percent error in the observed temperature of boiling water is 1.5%.