In introductory physics courses, it is often difficult for students to understand the importance of taking uncertainties into account when analyzing experimental data and the reason for taking multiple measurements of the same parameters.1–3 To address these issues, algebra-based introductory physics students at Penn State Behrend determined the acceleration due to gravity by dropping a ball from different heights and using their phone or a stopwatch to measure the drop time.4 The goal of the experiment was not to make an accurate measurement of g but to help students understand the importance of uncertainty by performing an experiment that generates very noisy data to extract a familiar quantity and also to show the purpose of taking multiple measurements.
The experiment was successful in introducing students to some aspects of using uncertainty in their analysis, since most students had no background in terms of calculating or even reporting uncertainties....