Analysis

          In this project, I also wanted to perform statistical analysis in order to obtain a more appropriate value for the mass of electron. I did this by first finding the weighted mean of the masses from the energy and mass data obtained from Trial 2, based on possible error in  and , and then finding the corresponding error estimate.
            In calculating a weighted mean of all the masses, each mass (one for each of the 10 angles) is given a specific weight, and the average is then taken. For example, masses with a bigger ‘weight’ contribute more to the final average than masses with a smaller ‘weight’.

            In this case, the equation for calculating the weighted mean is:

            And the equation for calculating the error estimate is:

            I decided that the maximum by which my  values could have been wrong is 1 o, or 0.017 radians, in which case,

            In all of the above cases, mi is simply the mass of the electron calculated for the angle in question. All of the angles were expressed as radians.

            The following table was made in Microsoft Excel:

            Table 3. Statistical analysis calculations

            From Table 3 above,

= 8654.024163         and                = 0.033373504

 

        and         

 

            Therefore, the mass of the electron is:

509.22  KeV or 9.0793926   kg