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1.1 Physical Quantities, Units and Measurement

Cambridge IGCSE Physics Notes, Measurement

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15 views7 pages

1.1 Physical Quantities, Units and Measurement

Cambridge IGCSE Physics Notes, Measurement

Uploaded by

Pride Chapeyama
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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1.

Physical quantities, Units and Measurement

● Physics involves the study of various physical quantities.


● A physical quantity is a physical property that can be quantified (it can be
measured and expressed with numbers).
● Examples of physical quantities: mass, length, time, temperature, electric current
and many others.

● A physical quantity is the product of a numerical value (magnitude) and a unit of


measurement.
Physical Quantity = Numerical value x Unit of measurement
● For example in a force of 3N, 3 is the numerical value and N, Newton is the unit
of measurement.

SI Units:
● SI units is the international system of units. It is used by scientist all around the
world to avoid confusion. It is consist of base physical quantities and their
corresponding base units. These are:

● All other physical quantities in physics are derived from the base physical
quantities and are hence known as derived physical quantities and derived units.

Prefixes
● Prefixes are powers of ten.
● These are used to avoid very large and very small numerical values.
● Some commonly used prefixes are:
* From here, you only need know the prefixes pico to tera

● Examples:
One milliampere (mA) is 1 x 10^-3
3MJ (MegaJoule) = 3 x 10^6

* Note: The symbol of milli is small letter (m) and mega is capital letter (M). Don't get
confused! :)

Scalars and Vectors


All physical quantities can be categorized into two terms:
● Scalar quantities
● Vector quantities

● Scalar quantities are physical are physical quantities that require only magnitude
to be defined completely.
● Examples of scalar quantities/scalars: length, mass, time, speed, distance
● Vector quantities are physical quantities that require both magnitude and
direction to be defined completely.
● Examples of vector quantities/vectors: displacement, velocity, acceleration, force
Solving the resultant of vectors geometrically

● Scalar quantities are calculated arithmetically while vector quantities are


calculated geometrically.
● A vector is represented by a straight line with an arrow. The length of the arrow
represents the magnitude (unless stated otherwise in the question or a scale is
given) and the arrow indicates the direction.
● The resultant of two vectors is represented by the resultant vector.

Vector Resultant vector

Rule 1:
● If two vectors are acting in the same direction, the resultant vector is the sum of
the two vectors.
● If two vectors are acting in the opposite direction, the resultant vector is the
difference between the two vectors.
● When both the forces are acting in the same direction, the resultant force,
R, is the sum of the two forces. This is because both the forces are acting
in the same direction.
● When both the forces are acting in opposite directions, R, is the difference
between the two forces. The direction of R is in the direction of the larger
vector (in this case the vector is force).

Rule 2:

Parallelogram Rule:
● If the length of two adjacent sides of a parallelogram represents two vectors. The
diagonal of the parallelogram represents the resultant vector.

Steps:
1. Set a suitable scale. For this, I have taken 1N = 1cm
2. First draw one of the force. I have drawn a 3cm line horizontally first and labelled
it 3N.
3. Then with a protractor I measured out 60° from the left-end of the line and I
marked the point.
4. Then at the point I drew a 5cm line and labelled it 5N.
5. The diagram now consists of two adjacent lines.
6. Now draw an exactly parallel 3cm dotted line from the top of 5N force. Now join
the remaining two points with dotted lines to form a a parallelogram This line
should be parallel to the 5cm line.
7. Draw the diagonal of the parallelogram.
8. Measure the length of the diagonal. I got 7cm and because my scale was 1cm =
1N, the resultant force, R = 7N.
● In many of these questions, you have to select the scale unless specified
in the question. So if they give you forces such as 50N or 60N, taking the
scale as 1N = 1cm or 2cm wouldn't be suitable as the question paper
wouldn't be that long! A suitable scale would be 1cm = 10N.

● The best way to master these types of questions is by practicing. So


practice as many as you can from your textbook and also from the
question paper.
Measuring length
Length can be measured using various equipment.

● Precision is the smallest possible value that can be read by an equipment.

Measuring Time
● Time can be measured using stop clocks and stopwatches.
● The precision of an analogue stopwatch is 1s and the precision of a digital
stopwatch is 0.01s.
● When measuring time using watches, the reading has to be taken manually and
this involves human errors. This can be reduced by taking several readings and
calculating the average.

Measuring Volume
● Measuring cylinders can be used to measure the volume of liquids or, by
measuring the change in volume, the volume of an irregular shape.
Multiple Readings
● Suppose you have to measure the thickness of a sheet of paper. The thing
that you are trying to measure is so small that it would be very difficult to
get an accurate answer
● If, however, you measure the thickness of 100 sheets of paper you can do
so much more accurately. Dividing your answer by 100 will then give an
accurate figure for the thickness of one sheet.
● This process of taking a reading of a large number of values and then
dividing by the number, is a good way of getting accurate values for small
figures, including (for example) the time period of a pendulum – measure
the time taken for 10 swings and then divide that time by 10.

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