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sts66

09/01/20 5:25 PM

#294383 RE: Chemist2 #294166

Could be a rounding phenomena, but typically you only show as many significant digits (numbers right of the decimal) as you can accurately measure - so if they could measure to the 2nd sig digit they would have written 3.6 as 3.60. At least that's how you properly do it in other sciences like physics and engineering - I recall people getting scolded for having more sig digits than possible during my college studies, some profs were really anal about it. And if you have a second sig digit your measuring device must be accurate to 1/10th of that second digit else it's not a valid measurement. Gets tough when you're trying to measure something to the 1000th of an inch, instrument must be accurate to one 10,000th of an inch. We once worked with a company that had a turbocompressor that ran on air bearings, tolerances were to 10,000th of an inch - I forget how the hell they measured gaps that tiny, the device would have to be accurate to 100,000th of an inch.