About the toolkit

Clear working, from input to answer.

A focused collection of free tools for students checking physics calculations, experimental data and lab-report working.

How to use the results

Use the working to check your reasoning and units. Explain your method in your own words and follow your course’s conventions. A calculator cannot decide whether an experimental method, data point or physical model is appropriate.

Uncertainty and rounding

The propagation tool implements the common school-lab rules: absolute uncertainties add for sums and differences; relative uncertainties add for products and quotients; powers multiply relative uncertainty by the absolute exponent. The latter rules are first-order estimates. This is distinct from combining independent standard uncertainties in quadrature.

Choose one or two significant figures for the final uncertainty. The measured value is rounded to the same decimal place. Exact decimal halfway cases round away from zero. Intermediate calculations keep browser precision; displayed working uses up to seven significant figures. The significant-figures tool rounds decimal strings directly.

Numerical and physical limits

Most calculators accept finite values with magnitudes from 10⁻¹⁰⁰ to 10¹⁰⁰, and zero where meaningful. Results outside the supported range produce an explanation. Standard JavaScript arithmetic provides roughly 15–16 significant decimal digits. The significant-figures tool separately supports written exponents from −1000 to 1000, with at most 256 input characters and 15 output significant figures.

Core data tools accept up to 5,000 values or pairs. Linearization and graph analysis accept 500 rows; all-rectangle error-bar optimization accepts 80 rows. A graph shows up to 1,000 sampled points for responsiveness; the regression uses every pair. No calculator estimates systematic effects automatically.

Review ownership

The public site deliberately does not publish a school name or school email. Corrections are tracked through the STEM portal feedback form.

Cross-subject methods & uncertainty conventions

Independent and private

This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by the International Baccalaureate Organization, College Board, AP or any school. Calculations run in your browser. Read the privacy page.

Further reading

• NIST: combined standard uncertainty — context for the different statistical propagation method.
• NIST Engineering Statistics Handbook: least squares — regression methods and model assumptions.