Errors

Potential sources of error that could have had an effect on the result include:

            1. Due to the nature of the cosine wave,  values calculated during statistical analysis may have had a large error in them. The Compton scattering equation can also be written as , from which it is evident that at smaller angles, just a tiny error in  will result in a large change in .
            2. The gap between the lead blocks shielding the front of the detector. The presence of this gap, which is necessary to measure anything at all, means that the measured gamma ray energies are not just the energies of the photons that are scattered at , but also of the photons that are scattered at angles slightly larger and slightly smaller than .
            3. Due to the nature of the equipment (as well as possible parallax), it is very hard to place the detector at exactly the desired angle, which may have shifted the measurements of energy one way or the other.