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carlie writes: "Ever wonder who's taking care of the 'National Kilogram'? Have a 40 foot structure you need tested to 12 million pounds of pressure? How about a 6 foot aluminum sphere with microwave plasma lamps called the 'Black Ball of Sunlight' to check that new polymer for photodegradation? The online version of the Washington Post has an article about the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, where all this and more occur daily."
Despite the rhetoric, the metric system is totally arbitrary. No mystical perfect basis to it. Water is just another liquid. (And your kg mass isn't even that. It's a PtIr alloy). As made up as the English system of units.
Or sure, you will now claim that the meter is defined by x wavelengths of y angstrom emmissions of excited Kr atoms and no doubt state with pride how the second is defined by n oscillations of cesium atoms. All hail metric. And well, The kg is still a slab of metal in Paris, though (/you sweeping facts under carpet). And Kr emmissions and Cesium oscillations will vary from sea level to the top of Everest of even a foot (or 30.48cm higher toy meter freaks? Or is it metre freaks?)) And that for this reason metric is superrior to English units?
Well, the *same technology* already defines the foot, second and slug. No better. No worse. Metric could've been built on English units and used kilofeet, millislugs, etc. (base 10 works in any system right? And need not be privy to metric?) and remained backwards compatible, but nooooooo. Snooty Frogs had to be different and l33t and reinvent the wheel.
The metric system is an evil plot to make us strip bolts, wrongfully crash probes into Mars, and use numbers that don't divide evenly by anything other than 2 and 5. A mile may be 5280 feet but that quantity divides EVENLY by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 20, 22, 24, 30, 32, 33, 40, 44, 48, 55, 60, 66, 80, 88, 96, 110, 120, 132, 160, 165, 176, 220, 240, 264, 330, 352, 440, 480, 528, 660, 880, 1056, 1320, 1760, 2640, 5280. A km is 1000m and divides evenly by 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 20, 25, 40, 50, 100, 125, 200, 250, 500, 1000. Making messy decimals more likely. And non terminating decimals when dividing by I guess bizarre everyday numbers like 3. Geez.
BTW, why is the base unit of mass in metric the KILOgram, shouldn't it be the gram? And why do people state "weight" or "thrust" in kilograms? Why not Newtons? Why do tires not list inflation ratings in Pascals? Why do we still ask for a "pint of ale" in the UK? If you wanted a universal constant for temperature, why did Centigrade scale not at least use absolute zero as one anchor point? And if base 10 is so l33t, where is metric time? Base 60? Why stick with millenia old numbering from Babylonian times yet praise base 10 everywhere else.
Sure English units are fucked. At least we admit it. But it learns just as easy as anything else. It evenly divides better by everyday numbers. Why to the metric heads think their shit don't stink and that metric is from the hand of God? It's as fucked as any other measuring system. More so because it's proponents won't admit it's just as arbitrary.
Non-Americans are such idiots.
I love when two minds of equal mental ability collide in fantastic debate! The stunning amount of facts supplied by both side to back up their arguments. The equal dismantling of the other side's arguments. Yes. This is one for the textbooks. The immobile object (USA) and the irrestible force (the metric system).
weight: the kilogram is no longer defined in terms of water. Sorry, I can't quote the current definition, but it's something more basic. People state weights in kilograms because people are ignorant. People state masses in pounds for the same reason. distance: sorry, the definition in terms of the wavelength of radiation produced in a certain process is no longer used. The meter is now defined as the distance light travels in 1/299792458 seconds exactly. temperature: the official SI temperature scale is the Kelvin scale, in which 0K is absolute zero. numerical base: sorry, I can't give any argument that would lead to preferring one base over another. We use babylonian time measures because they are convenient in everyday life. We use units of days, months, and years (in science)because they are very important cycles in biology and astronomy. However, for physical science, only the second is used. It would be nice if people who posted knew a little more about what they were talking about.
"The metric system is the tool of the Devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!" - Abe Simpson
Well I know of 1 place that they messure lenght in Smoots. At some point an MIT Frosh got a bit drunk and his frat brothers decided to help him with a homework assignment to messure something with a non standard unit. They used him to messure the mass ave bridge. (AKA The Smoot Bridge) if you dirve across it you can still see the smoot marks. But I'm not sure what they standard lenght of a "Smoot" is.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
You're a Jew. Your views are invalid and even dangerous. Please refrain from posting to Slashdot.
And you are a little shit who does not even have enough courage of your beliefs to sign your name.
Next time you want to insult me sign your name.
So many Hamens only one Purim.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
That would be fine if Microsoft published the standards so that others could use them.
The NSA is not terribly well know for sharing secrets, especially encryption secrets. We need an openly developed and studied encryption system. The advanced encryption standard discussed above is the Advanced Encryption Standard, which NIST chose last October. The AES will be a boon for government and private industry, giving the world a trustworthy, peer-reviewed encryption system that everyone can agree on. Government needs an encryption system and wants the best one possible. The American people deserve to know what system our government is using so that we can check it's quality ourselves. Someone needed to make this decision, and it was NIST's job. I'm quite happy with their effort. The world's top cryptographer all agreed that Rijndael (AES) is something they would be comfortable.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Actually, people generally measure their heights in centimeters.. I'm 169cm, your wife is 146cm, you are 167cm..
Is it strange that EVERYTHING at the N-I-Standards-T is decidedly UNSTANDARD?
Soon they would be irrelevant: In 1866 Congress declared the metric system to be the basis of measurement in the United States. You read that right. Even
though most Americans still aren't entirely clear how long a centimeter is, for more than a century the metric system has been the foundation on which
American measures were defined. In 1893 the U.S. pound was officially described as 0.4535924277 kilogram, and the yard, 3600/3937 meter.
Given the problem with NASA and that we are truly going into a century of science. The USA needs to move to the metric system. It may take 25 years but it worth it. The US need to stop thinking they live in a bubble.
NIST has a *MINISCULE* budget compared to that asinine black hole of a military system you guys keep pouring most of your money into.
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OOoohhh!! I like that!
Let's get Peter Molyneaux in to hack the Slashdot code a little -- I want a Black & White interface for Slashdot, so that I can pick, oh, say, Katz as my animal alter-ego. Whenever he posts a new article, I'll get to bitchslap him 'til he cries!
Of course, there'll have to be some sort of physical interface down at Slashdot HQ, so that the graphic interface can be translated to actual abuse...
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So does Japan, for that matter.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The annual standards issue of Physics Today (March 2001, p32) suggest making mass a "derived unit". These would come from two fundamental equations of physics- E = mc2 and E = hv giving m = hv'/c2.
C is the speed of light
v' is a vibration rate defined as some highly stable atomic vibration known to 18 decimal places such as in an atomic clock. The prime refers to a frequency chosen to be exactly a kilogram.
h is Planck's quantum of action, measured independently in other experiments.
NIST (formerly the National Bureau of Stanards) is also the home of Expect, a Tcl-based tool for automating all sorts of stuff. It was designed as a system administration tool, but has become incredibly popular for test automation.
Expect is not GPL'ed; by law, it's public domain.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Some folks realize that there is a value to using encyption other than to hide ones world domination plots. Thanks to the NIST, we've now got a PATENT FREE, openly developed set of technology, which has been really worked over in the best sense by a lot of smart people.
I'd willing pay the millions to keep some of the science being done patent free, especially science that will become a standard.
The alternative is the verisigns and network solutions of the world. The cost may be harder to pinpoint but it is real. So rock on with at least this bit of "pork barrel" spending.
Would the sphere be abel to cook anything like a Thanks Giving turkey?
I don't know, but it would give you one hell of a tan.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
haven't you ever been hit in the eye by flying ketchup?
Many years ago the instrumentation company MTS provided a device to test to destruction a mine jack. Yes, they built a machine to crush a machine which was designed to hold up the rock roof of a mine and measure the entire process. I wonder if that is this device.
In fact I recall I think it was 20/20 or 60 minutes which had an article where researchers were being paid high salaries to test the flow of ketchup (catsup/ketsup) and if it was thick enough for the American market.
What is it with luddites on Slashdot? NIST is a vitally important hi-tech facility that does far more than simply measure the viscosity of ketchup. I live 5 minutes away from it and have been there many times and I never knew this. Taking one *minor* area of research and blanketly saying they aren't necesary is a disservice to NIST and the country (USA). BTW the reason I *don't* work there now is because I can make more money in the private sector. My dad worked at NIST (not on this alleged ketchup project) and I have surpassed his salary.
Surely someone can regulate what constitutes a neccessity, but why not branch some of these things to academia, where things are always revolutionary changing constantly to keep up to date, as opposed to following standards set eons ago.
You don't understand what they mean by standards. They can very accurately measure flow rates (like at your gas pump), weights (for commerce), lengths (for better manufacturing), etc. They aren't about establishing standards (though they do sometimes) so much as QA of current standards like the meter, the US pound, etc.
Government can cut budgets by passing some of these tasks to colleges, then pay the universities to keep track of this at the fraction of a cost, keep students excited about helping government, and saving us all some money.
Um how? You mean by giving them more money? The government already gives state Universities money. What proof do you have that a bunch of students often more concerned about getting drunk can do what phDs at NIST do better and for less money? They serve different purposes and handle things that University research can't do.
NIST is one of the reasons that America is at the leading edge of technology. NIST and research labs like it employ *many* phDs from all over the world. Believe me, there are far more intelligent people at NIST than any of the Fortune 500 companies I've worked for. If we cut funding to NIST then many people will not have a reason to get a phD because there will be no jobs for them (outside of Universities). Guess what? Many smart people will leave the country and go to other places with hi-tech research and we will become an insigificant country.
Here is a *small* list of the many important things that NIST does:
- Better fire detectors
- Bomb sniffing
- Nanotechnology
- 1997 Nobel prize winner in physics for using lasers to cool atoms. This was a Slashdot topic BTW
- Advanced Robotics
- Advanced Manufacturing - This is really cool stuff.
- Semiconductor Fab - i.e. making faster computer chips
- ...
Just because you don't know or understand what they do doesn't mean it isn't important.In 1791 the FAS decided to define the meter as 10^-6 of a quadrant of a meridian (i.e. one millionth of the distance from the equator to the north pole), as we all learned in high school.
It's a peculiarly awkward definition, because it really can't be measured in the laboratory. In fact, it fixes the meter to a kind of simple sounding theoretical shape that doesn't correspond to physical reality without all kinds of unsimple geometrical qualifications. The Earth is somewhat pear shaped, not spherical, and local topography means that the arc that defines the meter is usually well underground. It's a tremendous surveying task to determine the length intended.
So, why did they choose to fix the meter at the length they did?
Well, it turns out that the length they had in mind was the length of a pendulum having a half period of one second. A reasonable facsimile of a standard could be fabricated by any compenetent clockmaker, who could be found in any technologically advanced country due to the importance of chronometers for navigation. The accuracy of such a standard could be checked by ensuring the pendulum swung back and forth 43200 times between noon and noon the next day.
The problem is that there were slight gravitational anamolies from place to place on the Earth. To really fix the length of the meter, they would have to fix it as the length of such a pendulum at a specific spot on the Earth -- most likely Paris. This was obviously a matter of political prestige, so they chose a definition which was more diplomatic, but harder to measure. In fact, in practice they ended up going by a physical artifact -- a bar of platinum iridium alloy stored in Paris.
Which was a good thing because they got the surveying wrong. Measuring by the practical standard they produced, one millionth of a quarter of the meridian passing through Paris was 1.0002 meters: remarkably good for surveying, remarkably bad for standards setting.
Much later, this was physical standard was replaced by a definition based on the wavelength of radiation from an isotope of Krypton. This lab friendly definition was later replaced by a definition of the meter based on the speed of light. It is the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in a defined faction of a second.
Which means once again, the meter is linked to the second.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There is an ongoing dispute between male and female researchers at the NIST over the exact size of six inches.
The US is switching over to metric time some day, mark my words. Remember this moment, people: 80 past 16 on the 35th of March.
Slashdotters will be interested to know someting that wasn't mentioned in the article: NIST is a hotbed of Beowulf cluster activity. Dr. Mark Edwards, who is working on Bose-Einstein condensates while on leave from my universisity, has built a multi-layered cluster of over 100 nodes using 266 MHz PII machines acquired from the Bureau of the Census. With encouragement and seed money from Edwards (or more precisely, from the National Science Foundation), a group of undergraduates at Georgia Southern University has built a 16-node cluster out of junk P-Ones, and is planning another one. (I know about this because I am one of the project's faculty advisors.) The success of the cluster has attracted enough attention from the university administration that Linux is being seriously taken into account here for the first time.
It's remarkable that this sort of heavy-duty research effort is being carried out by undergraduates -- this is what Linux and other free software make possible. The tools are there if you have the ambition. Have a look at our Georgia Southern Beowulf Cluster website.
Dr. Davis Robinson
Associate Professor
Dept. of Literature and Philosophy
*** "Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden". -- Rosa Luxemburg ***
Sorry, i meant that England is the only EUROPEAN contry with left-side traffic
Ireland too.
-Bruce
Two examples that make your case. 1) Internet RFCs, keeping (network) commerce and business flowing. The RFCs will undoubtedly go down as one of the most successful collections of standards ever (IMHO of course). Now take ANSI SQL. Implemented haphazardly by various independent self serving organizations. ANSI SQL does not drive interoperability between platforms except at the simplest level.
SuperID
Free Database Hosting
Dunno 'bout anyone else, but my car gets AT LEAST 500,000 rods/hogshead.
Microsoft announces new electricity protocol
Only at around 4 degrees C. All bets are off for different temperatures, and it has to be 100% pure. If you have to be that precise, I don't see the point in linking them.
...filtration device set up to get perfectly pure water. At least Farenheit lets you go down to the beach to get your water.
You don't see the point ? I see it : if I have to carry around 5 bottles of 1 liter of milk, I can say I have to carry around 5 kg with an excellent precision (less than 1% error, if you don't count the bottle packaging). Don't need complicated computing to go from here to there : just need to change the unit. Nothing else can be easier.
Multiples of 10 are fine if you only want to deal with decimals. But how do you write out a third of a kilometer?
1/3 kg if you need precision, or 1.33.. (depending on the required precision). I thought fractions were part of the math teaching in school in US...
Then you are trying to force the universe into your base 10 system, instead of adjusting your system to the universe.
And how are the English units more adjusted to the universe ? Are you counting in base Pi or something along that line ? You are just using a bunch of various centuries old units that don't fit together. They are fine all by themselves but as soon as you need to convert, it's a mess, because no one took care of making them relevent to each other.
By that argument, then, we should use a system that is based on SEAwater, not pure water. And what's the freezing point of seawater? 0 degrees Farenheit.
Again you are wrong. The water from the Dead sea doesn't freeze at 0 degree fahrenheit. There's not one sea water but different sea water with various degree of salinity and other components (including microscopie algae). Basic a unit on this soup is stupid. On the other hand there's only one kind of pure water.
The easiest way to get 100% pure water is to make it from pure hydrogen and oxygen. And if you already have the hydrogen handy
So ?
And, on the other hand, while not all that abundant on Earth, hydrogen is hands-down the most common substance in the universe. So shouldn't we be using it by your own arguments?
No - unless you leave on a hydrogen cloud somewhere in the galaxy. Humans will (for a long time) still leave in oxygen and water based environement. Basing their liquid units on water makes sense.
...and again get incorrect results, as there's not one kind of sea water.
So 32.2 is an inherently more difficult number to learn than 9.86? 14.7 is more difficult than 101325? 93 million harder than 149 million? 2.997 E 8 is worse than 9.835 E 8? 491.67 makes less sense than 273.15?
That's not the point. The point is that all distance/mass metric units convert between each other flawlessly with only the move of a comma. English units require a multiplication/division by a constant for EVERY unit change. So you need to learn all those constants.
By using measurement systems that include more primes as divisors (even if it's just the addition of 3), you're giving yourself more room to manuever in which to state a measurement with precision instead of an approximate decimal
If you want precision use fractions. Nothing can replace them, not even your old English units. If you can leave with a degree of error, then use a base 10 : it's very easy to learn and use (just a comma to move). Why would you bother with a bunch of incompatible units that needs odd constant to switch from one to the other ? just because some of them are divided by 3 ? Following you logic, we should all count in base 84 because it's a multiple of 1,2,3,4,6 and 7 ? That's silly. Besides, even with your English units you still count in base 10 anyway, so you could as well use units that are 10 multiplies of other units.
Knowing that the meter was originally based on the circumference of the Earth as measured along the line of longitude through Paris, France does almost nothing for me.
That's the only point I'll concede you. But I don't think it's a high price to pay if that means you can just convert units without a calculator.
Metric could've been built on English units and used kilofeet, millislugs, etc.
Buzzzz. Wrong. Thanks for playing !
The metric system is linked : a liter of pure water weights exactly 1 kilogram... woud you care to remind us of how many ounces weight a gallon of water exactly ?
A mile may be 5280 feet but that quantity divides EVENLY... A km is 1000m and divides evenly
Yep, but I'd rather use units that have less multiples but have 100 as one of them that a unit that have more multiples but only ones like "176 or 165" like your miles. How often do you count in base 176 exactly ?
Water is just another liquid.
No - it's the raw liquid most commonly available on earth, and almost the only one. Liquid hydrogen or nitrogen is not easy to find, neither is raw mercury. Only a fucked up mind would base it's unit system on another liquid than water. Or someone who lives on Jupiter (hint : you don't).
If you wanted a universal constant for temperature, why did Centigrade scale not at least use absolute zero as one anchor point?
There's some sense to this but :
- absolute 0 temp has only been known quite recently, and by the time it was found temp. units were firmly established worlwide. There was not time to wait for the (possible) discovery of absolute 0
- centigrades are based on freezing and boiling point of pure water at sea level. That's a unit fairly easy to understand for anyone on earth, as long as you know how to make a fire and have an idea of what ice looks like.
Sure English units are fucked. At least we admit it. But it learns just as easy as anything else.
No it doesn't. Really.
It evenly divides better by everyday numbers.
If you consider (I quote you) 33, 40, 44, 48, 55, 60, 66, 80, 88, 96, 110, 120, 132, 160, 165, 176, 220, 240, 264, 330, 352, 440, 480, 528, 660, 880, 1056, 1320, 1760, 2640, 5280 as everyday numbers, then maybe. But my everyday number is 10. Mastering multiplication/division by 10 is all you need to manipulate ALL metric units. You can use your fingers for all of them. Can't be easier than that.
indeed.. it should have been (+1, insightful) rather than informative.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
NIST discovered the 5th state of matter!!! NIST scientists receieved a nobel for this discovery a few years ago!!
NIST runs MEP, one of the few government programs that generates a profit while aiding small business development in america.
NIST development created WAIS, Wide Area Information search, the precursor to WebCrawler and Lycos.
NIST invented the scanning tunneling microscope, without which the RAM your computer is running could never have been designed.
NIST research was the first to show that the universe has parity
NIST's Information Technology Laboratory has contributed open research to America about IT, including a lot of open source software. Sure, it doesn't show a profit, so Congress can call it "waste" - but I know that you know that we all use it.
get a goddamn CLUE!!!
Or someone will beat you with the clue stick.
NIST has a solid history of debunking junk science and provide nobel-level physics and science research. If you are reading this on a laptop, your screen's interface was designed at NIST. The sad part is that I can barely remember all their contributions to science in the 5 minutes i'm taking to write this.
But I shouldn't have to. Why don't we tear down the space shuttle and use it to build houses?
Get your stupid troll out of my face.
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What happens when you outlaw guns
with their embrace and extend philosophy, it'd become the National Kilogram 'and a half'...
(Hmmm... I smell an off-topic mod coming...)
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
Put it this way:
Competition is good. Sometimes it may seem inefficient, but in reality that redundancy is insuring that we don't get stuck at some local maximum and truely go for the global maximum.
www.eFax.com are spammers
thats funny. A 50 meter tunnel filled with methane/air. That successfully makes a 50 meter CANNON!
Sounds sort of like the goatse guy.
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""You could have lunch in your modem," Stanford says.
maybe a little off topic, but did anyone else get slightly annoyed by the condescending attitude towards the scientists and "eggheads" while the glass-blower was made out to be an artist and "maveric" etc. etc? Stupid mainstream media.. *grumbles*
Sorry, i meant that England is the only EUROPEAN contry with left-side traffic. Beg your pardon, dear Sirs.
You are the same decaying organic matter as the rest of us.
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Still rely on the French to define your unit of mass, eh? (Rusting, other chemical readtions with the block. Bye bye perfect reference!) And the meter being
the distance from the North pole to the equator thru Paris divided into 10,000,000 parts? Yah, that's real accurate
The kilogram is the only unit that is still defined after a physical reference: a 2001-like monolith of platinium covered with iridium, located at the Conservatoire national des arts et metiers There are other equivalent "reference kilograms" worldwide that are similarly amagnetic and insensitive to rust or corrosion. The metre is the distance covered by a photon in 1/299 792 458 second. The second itself is based on transitions between two states of the cesium 133 atom. More information at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (Yes, there is an English version-
And why do people state "weight" or "thrust" in kilograms? Why not
Newtons?
Because people (including me and you) are morons, so they use a MASS unit to describe WEIGHTS and FORCES, or use WEIGHTS and FORCES to determine MASSES. This is totally stupid if you're an angst-ridden physicist living in an ivory tower somewhere in the Kalahari desert. For the rest of us, since G is a constant in any given place (there may be slight differences between two different places), the confusion is acceptable, because measuring something's WEIGHT is still the easiest way to determine its MASS. Could you tell me of any practical mass measurement method (for solids) that does not rely on weight comparison ?-
Why do we still ask for a "pint of ale" in the UK?
First, because Brits are drunkyards. Personally I always drink beer by the glass (half-pint)Second, because you (or at least your ancestors) blatantly screwed the French. In 1875, France accepted to leave the international zero-meridian to the English (Greenwich instead of Paris), because the English promised to adopt the metric system in return. Yet another shameless lie from the Perfide Albion
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And if base 10 is so l33t, where is metric time? Base 60? Why
stick with millenia old numbering from Babylonian times yet praise base 10 everywhere else
There is no such thing as "metric time". The second was invented by astronomists long before the metric system. The idea to "pack" the second with the metric system (metre, kilogram, litre) in order to have a coherent measurement system is (c) Gauss (1832). And this is how the International System was born.And, by the way, there is no base-60 stuff in the International System itself. The only time unit in it is the second, period. If you were to speak in pure IS units, you would talk about kiloseconds and hectoseconds (just in the same way as you talk about milliseconds or microseconds). Hours and minutes are pure legacy stuff, and are not part of the IS - they're just here because it's easier to divide the day in 24 hours than in 86,4 kiloseconds.
Thomas Miconi
Oh yeah?
Buckets,
pompomtom
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
For all of you engineer geeks looking to do this kind of cool stuff, you might want to check out the Underwriters Laboratories (yeah, the UL on the back of damn near every bloody device that uses electricity :)). You know those videos you see of a robotic arm slamming a refridgerator door over and over, or dudes in lab coats and goggles watching a laser, or even a building getting torched to test the sprinklers? Probably taken from the UL. Beats working for a government agency anyhow. ;)
Deosyne
According to this article, NIST will be constructing a high-tech Advanced Measurement Lab in the near future to combat the problem of vibrations.
Available in both Canadian official languages of course!
Mmmmmmm. Floor pie!
Hahaha
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Nitpick... that would be the Canadian Standards Association (CSA).
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LMAO!
"Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire" --Robert Frost
The real test is, could this press close up the Goatse.cx guy's asshole?
"Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire" --Robert Frost
I mean, $20 to fill up my minivan? My car I had in the UK would take 60UKP to fill (~$100).
Rich
Someone please mod slashdot so that articles get proofread before being submitted. If nothing else, could Roblimo (a real journalist) at least go and slap these guys around a little bit.
Rich
1 UK pint=20 flOz, 1 US pint=16 flOz. An ounce is the same both places and so is an lb (or as near as dammit).
So I guess that puts the lie to that. Unless you use the American Standard Definition of "The World" which means anything bordered by Canada,Mexico, the Pacific and the Atlantic.
Rich
320% ratio, or, 3.1:1 AKA 76.2% methane
It's somewhat interesting that most of the standards developed out of a requirement to keep commerce and business flowing and moving, with emphasis placed on commonality and uniformity. Now so-called 'standards' actually *compete* for business. This suggests to me that the critical industries, where actual material is moved as commodity, require real, common, physical standards, and that all the other 'industries' are really just using standards as another term for product. No wonder certification exams are so hard to standardize.
I visited NIST in the fall as part of a conference, and I didn't see anything wasteful at all. Consumer advocacy is very important. We are lucky to have things like the FDA.
Their efforts in computer science have been very good. One of the main things that they do is provide evaluation metrics and facilitate competitions/evaluations for different tasks. Often times it is hard to really define metrics for software evaluation (cf all the benchmarkings for speed). This is something that should not be left to the manufacturer's (which is why all these non-independent evaluators tell us how slow Linux is compared to Windoze). By defining a task and then performing the evaluation on the software, NIST acts a real independent evaluation. This is the type of role they play in many industries. I'd rather have NIST doing this than relying on the marketing people.
"Politics is for the moment, an equation lasts eternity" -A. Einstein
Although the original metric system was based on pure water(the calorie was defined in terms of heating water), it really has nothing today with today's system which relies on much more precisely measureable quanitities. And actually, the real basis of the measurement system was some very bad measurements of the earth which they attempted to divide up evenly into the meter. This was then combined with the second (which is a very arbitrary division of time). This distance and length measure were then used with water to get standards of length, energy, and temperature. Now, for example they used fixed wavelengths from a band in the Cesium spectrum to measure length, and atomic decay times to measure time (they should use a pulsar instead). One of the points of the article is that we are using an actual kilogram and comparing things to it (which is very primitive). One can also imagine that the real international standard is not very similar to the US one, at least at the precision we can now measure things at (considering it is over a hundred years old). There wasn't any information about this in the article.
"Politics is for the moment, an equation lasts eternity" -A. Einstein
When I worked for this synthetic diamond manufacturing company, that is where I got to see some serious pressure. They would put these little boxes of graphite into these huge 6 cylinder presses and squeeze them into solid diamond. I'm not sure exactly how much pressure it was but I heard that one of their competitors had a malfunction at one of their plants in France and one of their presses broke. The release of pressure was so great that it sent one of the hydraulic cyclinders clean through their factory wall and into an adjacent building. Also unfortunately, the press operator was standing right in the way of the projectile, he was instantly killed.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
Domain Names for $13
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
I wonder ifthe physics BS I'm about done with will be enough to get me anywhere near the door. Probably not. It's a good thing I like the job I have now (sysadminning.. yum), because my degree is going to be pretty worthless. Why didn't someone tell me that when I started it?
s'pore as well i think
That is not a mental image I will treasure for my dotage.
"Old Rallydrivers never die - they just fail to book in on time"
Trust me not to proof read. It was 20% methane. The danger level is considered 4% from memory and a highly impressive explosion can occur not long after that. 5% maybe? Been a while since I got the run down, but be that as it may, the margin of error in a coal mine for methane levels is quite small, so I'll take your word for it. Some of the work they did in this gallery in the years later was the testing of flash suppessors and water baffling to stop the flame fronts that accomany a mine explosion. Also, a flash unit for a camera that could be used in highly explosive enviroments, that would also survive huge explosions. Even tho it seems obvious, they discovered that the most damage is not caused by the initial explosion, but the shockwave and air being shoved down the tunnels, as well as the debris being licked up and hurled. Enough to turn a 50 ton mine truck to scrap (source - Appin mine disaster, 1978 - now the photos from inside that mine have to be seen to be believed. Machinery in the tens of tons range just thrown up shafts like toys) The explosion gallery advanced the work in explosive knowledge to quite a degree and also to Fuel Air Explosives. Unfortunantly, I dont think it's in operation at present Residents of the area kept complaining. Sadly. This is one impressive example of destructive testing that has helped save people's lives.
"Old Rallydrivers never die - they just fail to book in on time"
The Londonerry Occupational Health and Testing Centre, Richond NSW, Australia. It's a seriously cool place. The best place is what is called the Explosion gallery, where they simulate mine explosions. It is a 50 meter tunnel, which on it's forst test firing in 1979, was filled with a mix of air / methane to a ratio of 320% methane. This was before they knew exactly the power of mine explosions. They worked out they would need a ventilation fan for clearing the noxious gasses after the test firing, so they placed a 3 ton fan at the gallery entrance.
The video of the event went a bit like this.... show the bushland at the tunnekl entrance, a rumble and then a flash and then... BANG!.... and pieces of fan ripped the trees to shreds for 50 meters. Decorated other trees with metal bits for 100's of meters. Oh man, it's an awesome video. Also is a real eye opener to see the sheer power of an uncontrolled explosion.
Other interesting items are a full sized mine gallery to test fire fighting inside a mine, a cable destruction tester (up to 50 million newtons - a 5 inch steel cable breaking can punch holes thro 3 inch steel), an electrical destruction test lab, an engine dyno rated to 5000 hp and some serious computing grunt.
Great place... especially when you know the guy who runs the place.
"Old Rallydrivers never die - they just fail to book in on time"
How about a 6 foot aluminum sphere with microwave plasma lamps called the 'Black Ball of Sunlight' to check that new polymer for photodegradation?
I wanted to check that new polymer for photodegradation, but I was blinded instantaneously when I first saw the aluminum sphere in question.
(2:30 am...just finished modern physics homework...mind rambling)
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The AOL-Time Warner-Microsoft-Intel-CBS-ABC-NBC-Fox corporation:
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
As far as I know, the 2 biggest presses in the world are located 1 in the former Soviet Union, and one in Bldg 56, Denver federal center. It is Part of the Bureau of Reclamation lab. I've worked there, and at NIST in Boulder. (the atomic clock is cool.) The Press at the BOR stands head fully raised 50 feet, and has a head about 15 by 15 feet. The operating pressure is somewhere about 5M newtons. One of the most impressive things I have ever seen in action. I've seen 12"x12" lumber used as "stickers" against the head during a press pour water out like a sponge. And this is cured lumber. They also have tons of other stuff there, a low ambient pressure chamber for cavitation testing, a 100% humidity room, exact models of riverbeds that fill a 100'x50' room to test erosion. Just fantastic.
Or just go to Time.Gov It's a tid bit easier.
Oh, wait.
Do they have a standard BlueTooth spec there? It seems some folks are just estimating. ;)
Um, radians?
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taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Um, no it doesn't. It may be exact at a certain temperature and pressure, but it can vary a bit. This is why they decided to give up on water and use the platinum-iridium cylinder.
Furthermore, you are a clownboat.
Nope, it should have been (-1, redundant)
Why, yes I do. Who do I need to call to get a few large objects crushed.. er I mean tested?
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One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
*Beeep* Wrong.
There's something called "Planck units", which are not arbitrary at all.
For further reference, Take a look here, or try Google.
This is an EX-PARROT!
Besides, it probably CAN stand that much pressure! I love overbuilt government stuff. Like NORAD. It'd probably survive even if Sol decided to swallow up the earth. Or maybe not. But it's cool to see what can be built when money isn't a problem.
They got a homepage too with a nice organizational chart to give you an overview.
Don't dare to mod me up!
There is no such thing as "metric time".
Actually, there is, but no one uses it. Except for principal Skinner. Scientists tend to use seconds for everything, even if it runs up in the 10^6 seconds.
Have a 40 foot structure you need tested to 12 million pounds of pressure?
:)
yeh - the white house, and i'm sure that the results will benifit humanity
The metric system is based on a mistake made in measuring the distance OVER THE SURFACE of the earth instead of from the center to the north pole, later verified by satellites to be extremely close to the distance Napoleon would have found if he'd known how to measure that distance...the English foot.
If you want to see how incredibly accurate the English system is in relation to the universe, take a look at this site and read it for a while. It's only one example of many sites about the pyramids.
The metric system was flawed from inception, and is as geocentric as the Catholics during Galileo's day, while the English system is NOT arbitrary, but based on extremely accurate information about the size of the earth, sidereal time, and so forth which was known thousands and thousands of years ago.
Glad to learn about Fahrenheit being sensibly based, as well.
The metric system will fade in a few hundred years, the English system will either be revived then, or be recreated in exact proportions, because it is a more accurate expression of our place in the universe than the metric. I thank Napoleon for the canned food idea, though.
One quote from that site, by the way: "Thus the length of the Pyramid Inch is defined and it turns out to be 1.00106 British Inches, an amazingly close correspondence to our present day standard..."
I mighta remembered some of the details inaccurately, but this debate will be closed by the time I can post more accurately, so thanks for listening.
Psaw on you metric-lubbers.
information is immaterial
Imagine if corporations were allowed to have any standards they wanted: weights, times, measures. I'll give you a hint: think "Web Browser Incompatibilities". Now imagine if that were the situation with real products...
I bought this "Netscape Grade A Fancy Ketchup", but it turned out to be a green gelantinous substance made entirely from Coal Tar extract. So I bought some of the store brand "Microsoft .Ketchup," which was nice and red, but turned out to be made from beets and water...
Thixotropic substances aside, your remark that the NSA should do our crypto standards for us makes me think that you must work for the NSA. According to Applied Cryptography, the NSA has stated (off the record, of course) that if it had known that the NBS (NIST) was going to make the algorithm public, it wouldn't have allowed DES to become a standard. So unless you like all of your crypto implemented in hardware on tampler-proof chips, I suggest you support your friendly National Standards Committee.
Am I wrong, or is that not one of the signs of the apocalypse? In truth though, how far is that from MS's current development of complete 'smart house' systems? Will we one day have to worry about our living spaces blue screening?
Now hopefully individuals from Microsoft, and several other large organizations, will read that article and finally understand the critical need for solid standards. It's a shame that there really does not exist a coherent standards body in the software world that has the breadth and respect held by NIST. I often wonder how much advancement is being held back or hampered by the constant pissing wars between companies regarding standards. Possibly I'm looking at it from the wrong perspective, but to me it seems the current systems aren't working in our best interests.
Just thoughts.
How 'bout dividing a circle into 6,400 units and calling it a mill? Where Th' F... did the U.S. Army come up with that one for positioning artillery?
Actually, if destroying things for research is your opiate of choice, the Underwriter's Laboratory is the place for you. They zap, burn, smash, and thrash everything that gets the UL stamp on the bottom. From torture testing blenders to smashing TV screens, all is done to ensure consumer safety, and stand behind the manufacturer in case of lawsuit (Consumer: Your extension cord shorted out and burned my house down! Manufacturer: What did you have plugged into it? Consumer: A toaster, a microwave oven, and a George Foreman grill. Manufacturer: Sounds like you exceeded the UL recommended safe wattage load. Judge: The manufacturer is not liable for your damages. Case dismissed. (Gavel slam)). Similar institutions in other countries include Canadian Safety Administration (CSA) and Council European (CE).
Slightly off topic but still relevant, I remember back in highschool my physics teacher explaining that up here in Canada we used to use something other than 60hz for our AC electricty mains. After the system was established, it was realized that the system was giving people headaches because of the flicker on lights etc. This prompted a need to change it, of course everyone already had clocks designed for whatever sort of current there was. In order to alleviate any problems with faster clocks, the government ordered a whole bunch of trucks full of clocks to go out and have people trade in their old ones. If you think that this is off topic, youd be right, except for the fact that it shows what a headache changing an entrenched system can be. And this is only for clocks!!!
All a coder really wants, are fast cars, fast women and fast algorithms.
Slightly off topic but still relevant, I remember back in highschool my physics teacher explaining that up here in Canada we used to use something other than 60hz for our AC electricty mains. After the system was established, it was realized that the system was giving people headaches because of the flicker on lights etc. This prompted a need to change it, of course everyone already had clocks designed for whatever sort of current there was. In order to alleviate any problems with faster clocks, the government ordered a whole bunch of trucks full of clocks to go out and have people trade in their old ones. If you think that this is off topic, youd be right, except for the fact that it shows what a headache changing an entrenched system can be. And this is only for clocks!!!
All a coder really wants, are fast cars, fast women and fast algorithms.
Well, up in Canada, where we do usefull research (who has the neutrino detector again?), we have a 100,000,000 pound press for testing materials and structures at the university of manitoba.
My press could crunch your press.
-MR
-Michael Roy Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down
I believe that resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Dubya just recently visited Mexico for a "summit" after all. Ahem.
If you love God, burn a church!
Ewige Blumenkraft!
--NEWS BULLETIN--
National Kilo stolen, replaced with precise kilo of China White in daring Indiana-Jones style robbery.
The Mgt.
- 'tis an ill wind that blows no minds -
A company named K-Tron once made table scales which measured mass directly by measuring the change in resonant frequency of the entire platform/load cell assembly. This was highly nonlinear and each load sensing element was supplied with an EPROM describing the characteristics of its particular vibrating wire.
These babies were amusing when they broke, because they would display seriously counterintuitive and nonlinear responses as you added test weights to them.
And oh, this was quite an article. Working in the scale industry as I do, I quite appreciated it -- thanks, /. editors!
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
NIST is about 5 minutes from my house, I'll be interning there this summer in the Fire Safety Lab :)
The Technonaut
Agreed, but lets take a quick look at some of the branches of government doing the same, when one should be enough. Why can't one agency focus on this? Isn't NIST supposed to be the standard?
Sandia researchers develop world's fastest encryptor
ORNL Helps Develop Electronic Notebooks (read article to see crypto stuff)
GRIP -- Gigabit Rate IPSec (Army)
Cancer research (I never knew cancer genes needed encryption)
WING (DARPA)
NASA (why can't they look to NIST?)
Key Agile ATM (DARPA)
And theres a slew more. I agree that government should promote better standards, but instead of spending X millions on a bunch of bs, they should look to consolidate it all, which is what my main post should've stated I guess. Some of this so called research, or development never even sees the light of day due to timing situations. One part of government may intend to develop and deploy something, but it won't always happen, meaning all that money used for those projects are now gone, and they're left to ask for more money for some new project, never using their own resources to see if another agency can assist them.
360 degrees of Karma
Competition is good. Sometimes it may seem inefficient, but in reality that redundancy is insuring that we don't get stuck at some local maximum and truely go for the global
OK... I won't dig too deep into this... Its one government we're talking about, and the NIST, is supposed to be the definitive source for standards... Not the NSA, not DARPA, not any other branch of government. So who is government competing with locally when they compete with themselves? Thats even more reason to point out the wasteful spending.
Thats like Microsoft developers in the WindowsNT department creating another version of Word to sell as a Microsoft product named... Word and you don't see a problem with this?
360 degrees of Karma
complete referendum
In fact I recall I think it was 20/20 or 60 minutes which had an article where researchers were being paid high salaries to test the flow of ketchup (catsup/ketsup) and if it was thick enough for the American market.
The episode went on to document millions of dollars gone to waste over some "trivial" (*cough* stupid *cough*) programs with NIST being on of the top sectors in gov. Shouldn't this money be used for useful purposes such as creating new jobs, housing, drug rehabilitation versus incarceration, etc., or am I being a troll because I find a problem with millions being spent to make sure my ketchup is thick enough?
Now not to troll even longer, but I always thought the NSA handled this... or at least they would have the most input into any of the things related to security.... But what about the next one, shouldn't this be left to companies on their own to develop their own programs to meet their own needs, or is this something that just sounds good enough to push for more funding... (above taken from NIST)
How is government affected by someone's product that may not be compatible with anothers? Or let me rethink this, what defines an industry standard format, and according to whom, last I checked, I've never read anywhere that Microsoft had to make its *.doc files compatible with anything because of regulation.
Surely someone can regulate what constitutes a neccessity, but why not branch some of these things to academia, where things are always revolutionary changing constantly to keep up to date, as opposed to following standards set eons ago. Government can cut budgets by passing some of these tasks to colleges, then pay the universities to keep track of this at the fraction of a cost, keep students excited about helping government, and saving us all some money.
I know for a fact many students would love to delve into this, especially if it'd help their tuition go down slightly, while improving standards in the U.S.
Ghost in the shell (hiding your data)
360 degrees of Karma
Could you tell me of any practical mass measurement method (for solids) that does not rely on weight comparison? Put a balance scale in a centrifuge. Or recalibrate a spring scale for use in a centrifuge at a given angular velocity and radius.
Seriously, there are flow gauges which truly measure the mass of liquid per second by measuring the force it exerts on a bent pipe.
Do I have this right: Brits drink real beer (not the watered-down crap we have over here), you drink it by the pint, and your pint is 25% bigger? That's a lot of beer. ;)
"A pints a pound the world around" is from RA Heinlein, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. (Dreadfully condescending childrens' book, but it had a very nice illustration of how to do a close-enough measurement and calculation in your head and without proper measuring instruments.) I figured it for an old English saying -- but it may not have originally referred to either of the pints or pounds that are currently in use. And it is not an exact relationship in US units unless the water has some salt or pollutants that raise the density a little; the British pint might come closer...
how many ounces weight a gallon of water exactly? "A pint's a pound the world around." A gallon of water weighs about 8 pounds, a pint is one pound, or one ounce (liquid) water is 1 ounce (weight). Of course, this depends on the temperature and purity of the water -- but so does the 1 liter water masses 1 kg relation in the metric system.
But I agree that the English system is ridiculous. At least there is only one definition of kilogram or liter, as compared to several "gallons", two "pounds", two "ounce" weights... Even with the American standardization upon one particular set of English units, it's still a lot harder to work with than metric.
There are two exceptions: time and temperature. With time, we're still using the Babylonian system of base 12 & 60 -- and because we do have to divide up the day by other ways than 2 and 5, I don't think it can be changed for the better. (Also, redefining the second would invalidate whole books of physical constants). For temperature, now that we can precisely measure 0 K, scientists and engineers ought to be using the Kelvin scale -- most calculations using the Celsius scale require either subtracting two temperatures or adding an offset which actually converts to Kelvin. But the Fahrenheit scale has some real advantages for ordinary life: 0 to 100 F nicely defines the range from really cold to really hot for humans, and covers over 90% of temperate zone temperature measurements. The Celsius scale is rational only for chemical reactions in water (including cooking).
As to the benefit of the metric system over the Imperial/UK system? It's dead simple. Take one basic word, and throw on some prefixes to get the scaled-up or -down units. And conversion between units is a matter of playing with ratios of ten that can be done on one hand by adding and substracting zeros (the factor-label method, my chem teached called it).
The metric system is not inspired by god (as you seem to infer it is), nor it is perfect (I still meausre my heigh in feet/inches, but it is significantly simpler than anything out there.
Cue The Sun...
Just how would one go about getting a job like that. Testing and building and destroying things..sounds like a dream workplace, I wonder if it pays well?
One thing I really like about the International Standards; they're prepared to change.
The second *is* now defined in terms of oscillations of a particular isotope of a particular type of atom, instead of being a tiny fraction of the day-length, because we can measure those oscillations more accurately than we can measure the length of a day.
It's nice that this can be measured in any laboratory around the world. If/when gravitational effects become detectable, they are calculable; the correction need not be as precise as the original measurement, because it is such a small effect. And General Relativity *is* verified at that kind of level.
The metre was once defined in terms of a standard bar, but is now defined in terms of the distance light travels in a second, because that's what we can measure most accurately.
The Kilogram - is a lump of metal, because we can preserve and compare the mass of that lump of metal to greater accuracy than we can measure the mass of anything else. When that changes, the standard will be changed. Until then, nothing can be measured more precisely than that, so it doesn't matter.
Incidentally, it has been predicted that the 'lump of metal' will be replaced with a standard based on the mass of a certain number of atoms - in other words, a standard based on Avogadro's Number.
Yes, in some sense the units we use are arbitary. There exist, however, units which are *not* arbitary; units which are defined simply, solely, and entirely on the physics of the universe itself. Using these units, no physical equation requires any constants (apart from simple numbers like 2 and pi).
The problem with these units is that they are so incredibly, unworkably small! People don't want to measure distances in terms of quantities many times smaller than the diameter of an electron. Units like yards and inches came from the length of certain parts of the human body (a fine standard indeed!). The units we use are those convenient to the problem.
Rachel
Nuclear Physics PhD Student
Murphy's Law of measurements: Any required measurements will be in the least useable standard: e.g. speed limit 355 furlongs/fortnight
We're sorry, the phone number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try your call again
England has left-side traffic. Only England, mmkay?
ahem
So does Australia.
Only at around 4 degrees C. All bets are off for different temperatures, and it has to be 100% pure. If you have to be that precise, I don't see the point in linking them.
"Yep, but I'd rather use units that have less multiples but have 100 as one of them"
Multiples of 10 are fine if you only want to deal with decimals. But how do you write out a third of a kilometer? 333.333333333333333333333333... meters? 1760 feet (exact) is much more managable. One-sixth? That would be 166.666666666666666... meters for a kilometer, or 880 feet (exact) for a mile.
Forcing the use of decimals to avoid fractions is only beneficial to those that flunked that part of grade school.
"that a unit that have more multiples but only ones like "176 or 165" like your miles. How often do you count in base 176 exactly ?"
Then you are trying to force the universe into your base 10 system, instead of adjusting your system to the universe. Using numbers with more multiples allows more flexibility in getting a precise measurement.
"No - it's the raw liquid most commonly available on earth, and almost the only one."
By that argument, then, we should use a system that is based on SEAwater, not pure water. And what's the freezing point of seawater? 0 degrees Farenheit.
"Liquid hydrogen or nitrogen is not easy to find,"
The easiest way to get 100% pure water is to make it from pure hydrogen and oxygen. And if you already have the hydrogen handy...
And, on the other hand, while not all that abundant on Earth, hydrogen is hands-down the most common substance in the universe. So shouldn't we be using it by your own arguments?
"centigrades are based on freezing and boiling point of pure water at sea level. That's a unit fairly easy to understand for anyone on earth, as long as you know how to make a fire and have an idea of what ice looks like."
"No it doesn't. Really."
So 32.2 is an inherently more difficult number to learn than 9.86? 14.7 is more difficult than 101325? 93 million harder than 149 million? 2.997 E 8 is worse than 9.835 E 8? 491.67 makes less sense than 273.15?
"But my everyday number is 10. Mastering multiplication/division by 10 is all you need to manipulate ALL metric units. You can use your fingers for all of them. Can't be easier than that."
And finally, the foot-pound-second system is more durable and reproducable than the SI system. If I don't have a ruler (or a cesium clock and a Michaelson interferometer) handy, knowing that the foot was originally based on the average length of a man's foot will help me make better estimates. Knowing that the meter was originally based on the circumference of the Earth as measured along the line of longitude through Paris, France does almost nothing for me.
While my TI-92 Plus can handle that just fine, most calculators can't. Even sliderules use tenths, with maybe 3.14159 thrown in for effect.