Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-a-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2012/paper-1/section-a/4/solution

For radiative temperature uncertainty after background subtraction, write , so and . The two absolute uncertainties are both . If they are independent standard uncertainties,
If the percentages instead denote absolute error bounds, linear worst-case propagation gives 0.56%. With correlation coefficient , the standard-uncertainty result is ; subtraction makes positive common errors partly cancel. The independence convention is therefore an assumption, not information supplied by the percentages.

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