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Physics 238 Links: Spring 2025


Constants and Units

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) maintains a useful page with the current best values for many fundamental constants (along with their uncertainties) at http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/.

Uncertainty in Measurement

The standard guide to uncertainties is published by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) is GUM: Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement, commonly known as "GUM". The full guide is intended to be complete, but can be rather dense to read.

NIST maintains a publication summarizing those guidelines: See Guidelines for Evaluating and Expressing Measurement Uncertainty. Also, be sure to check out the Uncertainty Machine.


Getting Started with Wolfram Desktop

To obtain a student copy of Wolfram Desktop, visit the following ITS web site: https://help.lafayette.edu/wolframdesktop.

There are a variety of on-line tutorials available for Wolfram Desktop (formerly known as Mathematica). I recommend going to Wolfram.com and exploring their on-line resources. Time spent learning some basics now will be time well-spent. If you find the Mathematia syntax occasionally confusing or mysterious, it can be a real time-saver in the long run to try to grapple with it now.

Some students have reported the following to be useful:



This page is maintained by Andrew Dougherty