Final answer:
The ability to determine accuracy and precision from a single measurement is limited. Accuracy can be suggested if there's a known standard to compare with, but precision cannot be assessed without multiple measurements.
Step-by-step explanation:
If you make a single measurement in an experiment, accuracy and precision can't be fully determined. Accuracy refers to how close a measurement is to the correct value for that measurement. For instance, if a piece of computer paper is known to be 11.0 inches long, and a single measurement indicates 11.1 inches, the measurement appears accurate. However, without multiple measurements, we cannot assess if the results are consistently close to 11.0 inches, which speaks to precision.
Precision involves the consistency of repeated measurements, where precise values agree with each other. Without multiple measurements, we cannot evaluate precision because it is based on the reproducibility of the results. Therefore, with a single measurement, while we can get an indication of accuracy if we have a standard to compare it to, we cannot speak to precision.