Acrylic bone cement is commonly used in total joint arthroplasty as a grout that allows...

Acrylic bone cement is commonly used in total joint arthroplasty as a grout that allows for the smooth transfer of loads from a metal prosthesis to bone structure. The paper “Validation of the Small-Punch Test as a Technique for Characterizing the Mechanical Properties of Acrylic Bone Cement” (J. of Engr. in Med., 2006: 11–21) gave the following data on breaking force (N):

Assume that all population distributions are normal.

a. Estimate true average breaking force in a dry medium at 37° in a way that conveys information about reliability and precision, and interpret your estimate.

b. Estimate the difference between true average breaking force in a dry medium at 37° and true average force at the same temperature in a wet medium, and do so in a way that conveys information about precision and reliability. Then interpret your estimate.

c. Is there strong evidence for concluding that true average force in a dry medium at the higher temperature exceeds that at the lower temperature by more than 100 N?