Help Physics:What is the difference between experimental and theoretical values?

Question

I have a question asking what is my average experimental value for speed and another asking what is the theoretical value of that speed.
How would I go about finding the experimental and theoretical? What is the difference?
I basically have a table of different velocities to find these two different values. help?

Answer 1

The theoretical value is what you should have seen, and the experimental value is what you actually did see.



So, your average experimental value for velocity would be the average of all the velocities you collected in your experiment (assuming you did multiple trials of the same experiment)



Your theoretical value is what you should have observed IN THEORY. So, what you expected to see (even though your actual observations might be different).



In this case, your theoretical value would be what the velocity of the ball (cart, block, etc..) should have been.



Let's say you dropped a ball off of a table and had to find its final velocity... your theoretical value is found by using the equation for velocity with respect to height and gravity (you know the height you dropped it from, you know the accelleration due to gravity, you know the mass of the ball, etc...) so, what SHOULD velocity be by solving the equation?



Your experimental value is what you actually measured--in this case maybe you had a photogate at the floor and were able to measure the velocity of the ball as it went through, that's the experimental value.

Answer 2

Experimental Value Definition

Answer 3

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The experimental value will be the density you personally calculated for the penny in the experiment. The theoretical value for the density of the penny would be a number that was determined by other scientists and is deemed the accurate value for the measurement by the scientific society as whole. You are told to calculate percentage error by basically determining the difference between the accepted value and the one you calculated yourself and then turning it into a percentage. So in general, an experimental value is one that you have determined yourself, while the theoretical value is one you would find in either a textbook or some other reference source.

Answer 4

Experimental values are the values you get based off your experiment or the set of data given while the Theoretical values are the real world true values of that problem. Theoretical values are usually given to you by the problem while you have to find the Experimental.