A student wants to use indirect measurement to find the thickness of a
sheet of newspaper. In a 50-centimeter tall recycling bin, she finds 50
sheets of newspaper. Each sheet in the bin is folded in fourths. Design a
procedure for the student to use that would allow her to measure the
thickness of one sheet of newspaper with little or no source of
experimental error. The student has a meter stick and a calculator.



Answer :

We do not know, if the recycling bin is full of newspapers. If not, then she can put all of the newspapers over over another and measure the height.
Let's assume the height is 50 cm and every newspaper is folded in fourths. If she has 50 newspapers in a bin it means, that a newspaper folded in fourths has:
[tex] \frac{50 [cm]}{50} = 1 [cm] [/tex]
If its folded in fourths it means, that 1 newspaper is [tex]\frac{1 [cm]}{4} = 0.25 [cm] [/tex] thick.
Then, she can calculate number of pages in a newspaper and divide 0.25 by the number of pages.