Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-a-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2013/paper-1/section-a/5/solution

From Snell's law, . Treating the quoted angle errors as independent one-standard-deviation uncertainties and using radians in derivatives,
This refractive-index uncertainty from Snell's law is first-order propagation of uncertainty, with air's index approximated by one. Correlated angular calibration errors add . If the quoted errors are hard bounds instead, their conservative first-order sum gives about , rather than the statistical quadrature value.

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