Physics Lab 1 RD Lab Report

Jannire Mireles-Camey Physics Lab 1251 Professor. Okey 4 September 2021 Lab 1: Reaction Time Section 1: In this lab investigation, the guiding question is “Do two people have the same reaction time?” During this investigation the main goal is to conduct a procedure to measure a person’s reaction time. Reaction time is a measure of how quickly you can recognize a signal and produce a response. Therefore; the concept of this investigation is to measure the response time to then calculate the average of the reaction times and its standard error. The normal curve can help in finding if two people have the same reaction time by providing an average and standard error, when using the data collected. The normal curve shows a common probability distribution, which is the average or also known as the mean. The average and standard error is measured on an Excel sheet and with the average and standard error the discrepancy and uncertainty are calculated. When measurements and calculations of the results are reported it is important to report the best estimate and its uncertainty during this investigation. Section 2: When measuring reaction time for this experiment a game app called JustPark is used. JustPark app is a reaction time test game to see how long it takes a person to hit the emergency brake when driving. When using the app the spacebar of the computer is tapped as soon as a stop sign pops up on the screen, which then gives the reaction time score in milliseconds. To ensure consistent measurements during this experiment four people have to record their reaction time to the game 15 different times. When the four people have recorded

their reaction times there will be a total of 60 samples. To reduce error during the experiment the JustPark game is tested out first by each person to see how it is played. Section 3: When collecting data for the four participants' reaction times when playing the game 15 different reaction times from each participant is recorded. The four participants are: Al, Jannire, Meredith, and Sierra. With all participants collecting data for their reaction times it will allow for the guiding question to be answered. Therefore; if only two people out of the four only collect data there is a possibility that there will not be two people with the same reaction time. With all four participants participating it gives this experiment a larger chance that two people will have the same reaction time. To determine whether or not two people out of the four get the same reaction time, their different reaction times in milliseconds that are collected is recorded on an Excel sheet. Therefore; there are a total of 60 samples of reaction times and for each participant's column of their 15 reaction times the average, standard deviation, and standard error is calculated using Excel. All of the participants' reaction times vary with 32 ms being the fastest reaction time and 664 ms being the slowest reaction time. The average for Al’s reaction times is 261.1 ms and a standard error of 4.7 ms, Jannire’s average= 320.9 ms, standard error=32.1 ms, Meredith’s average=360.9 ms, standard error=11.9 ms, and Sierra’s average=403 ms, standard error=13.9 ms. Now with this data collected the discrepancy and uncertainty can be calculated. To find discrepancy the two different averages are subtracted and to find the total uncertainty two different standard errors are added. To determine whether two people have the same reaction times the discrepancy has to be less than the total uncertainty and if the discrepancy is larger than the total uncertainty then that means different reaction times. There is a total of six different comparisons between the four participants' average and standard error to find out which two people have the same reaction times. The first comparison is Al and Jannire with a discrepancy of 59.8 ms (320.9-261.1) > and a total uncertainty of 36.8 ms (32.1+4.7). The other comparisons were: Al vs. Meredith, Al vs. Sierra, Jannire vs. Sierra,

Figure 1.1 Each Participants Reaction Time to JustPark Game Al Jannire Meredith Sierra 245 ms 315 ms 404 ms 418 ms 243 ms 317 ms 355 ms 334 ms 262 ms 664 ms 361 ms 404 ms 259 ms 303 ms 336 ms 407 ms 261 ms 399 ms 396 ms 331 ms 271 ms 32 ms 441 ms 355 ms 263 ms 346 ms 310 ms 486 ms 263 ms 362 ms 341 ms 455 ms 264 ms 285 ms 323 ms 445 ms 279 ms 299 ms 334 ms 417 ms 252 ms 294 ms 306 ms 326 ms 312 ms 313 ms 366 ms 461 ms 251 ms 267 ms 376 ms 450 ms 260 ms 316 ms 454 ms 410 ms 232 ms 300 ms 310 ms 346 ms Figure 1.2. Calculated Average, SD, & SE Al Jannire Meredith Sierra Average 261.1 ms 320.9 ms 360.9 ms 403 Standard Deviation 18.2 ms 124.2 ms 46.2 ms 52.7 ms Standard Error 4.7 ms 32.1 ms 11.9 ms 13.6 ms