Slashdot Mirror
The Changing Definition Of 'Kilogram'
DrLudicrous writes "The NYTimes is reporting that the platinum-iridium standard mass for the kilogram is shedding at an appreciable rate -- at least compared to other reference masses. The Pt-Ir cylinder is kept in France, and measured annually, and the slight discrepancy is important because the kg is an SI base unit- thus other quantities such as the Volt are based on it. A new standard is being sought- the two frontrunners are counting the number of atoms in a perfectly spherical single crystal of silicon, and another technique uses a device known as the Watt balance."
Hey I live in America you insensitive clod! (but then again I alawys want to know how much they are lifting on Strongman Competition).
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
Yay, I wiegh less!
However, I don't know by how much, since I don't live in bloody England.
Everytime she steps on the scales...I would tell you what it was defined as last week, but kids may be reading this.
i'm not gaining weight, the kilogram is losing mass... so really, i stay the same weight, and they need more units to weigh me ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why couldn't they just take it down the shops and measure it against, say, 1kg of carrots or a kg of sugar?
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
...just define a kilogram in terms of 'x' number of Joules. Since c is a defined constant, then this would give you a constant mass.
It's not my ass, it's just that the units are getting incrementally smaller. Ho ho! It's not me. *dances*
Damned inreliable measure standards. *shakes fist*
Informatus Technologicus
Would have been nice to link to a site that doesn't require name, rank, serial number, and blood type to read.
Doncha mean Would have been nice to link to a site that doesn't require Bill Gates' name, rank, serial number, and blood type to read.?
nah .. they should throw out the whole kilogram concept and weigh everything according to a "library of congress".
eg. that woman weighes 2.36 libraries of congress.
I think I can speak for everyone and say
HUH?
porp
And all this time I just thought I was just getting used to cocaine.
Darn right! After all, it's easy enough to convert fortnights to stone with a Mayan calendar.
We're going to in the future eventually. It's inevitable.
I know it's 60 firesticks per 100 Watts, and 3000 Volts per staticy tomcat, but it might just be easier if we all just jumped in and switched to metric 144%.
I mean picture doing 100 on the highway! Wouldn't that be great? And dozens of future Mars landers would actually land on Mars, instead of digging ideal tree planting holes and landscaping future martian neighbourhoods. ("Zyphod! Incoming! It's the Americans!")
No more two sets of wrenches and lost sockets! Now you can have one set of sockets with half the sockets missing, instead of two sets of sockets with half the sockets missing. And no more asking for an 5mm and trying to make a 1 3/4" fit, rounding off the edges and carving a perfect turkey slice off your hand and gushing gallons of blood. It would be litres, which is less.
And you get to tell women that you, sir, are endowed with twenty-two centimeters of man!
Of course, the loss of the 25 cent piece will be a negative, since we'll have to pay for everything in dimes. But it's worth it dammit.
Seriously, we all know this is going to happen. When are we on board? Are we that stubborn?
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
It's not the arbitrariness, but the fact that metric is a decimal system.
The only countries left that don't use metric are the US and Bhutan. Bhutan is a fundamentalist islamic country that doesn't even have any phones yet. I guess we can see what the US' technical level is.
One kilogram is equal to the weight of 1/256th of a VW beetle! Simple as that! Silly French.
The only known quantity of Unobtainium (UB238) has gone missing.
The 1 kilo square block was being held in Brussels awaiting return to Brazil, where it was originally unearthed.
It was determined that the physical stability of the material was being affected by being moved from it's original location, that of being south of the equator. Investigators are anxious to reclaim the material in hopes of stabalizing it's rumored flux in mass. The UB238 was being packaged for transit, when it suddenly dissapeared from the shipping room counter. The rumor that it had created, and subsequently fallen into, a 'portable black hole' was discounted by investigators on the scene.
Once the Unobtainium is recovered, and returned to Brazil, it can be weighed and certified as a replacement for the Pt-Ir cylinder that is kept in France, and measured annually, representing the kilo standard for the world.
MPEG at 11.
Is the Oprah
I can't reveal its identity for this precise reason.
Yes - there is a mole in the base S.I. units - but I can't tell you it's name. Its been on a secret long term sleeper mission - to liberate the S.I. units and term them into "Freedom Units"
So I now weigh 75kg...give or take a bit :o
Wait till I tell my fiance that her weight
fluctuates on a weekly basis!
These pseudoscience concepts are getting out of hand.
I don't think we need "feel-good" physics.
Now they want to base a standard on a crystal ball?
I've been waiting a while to tell my high school chemistry teacher that a Kilo is 1024 of anything, and I do deserve that A. ~JM
I only went as far as Chem 1 for majors, so don't try to save the earth with this information.
Can I use the information to destroy the earth?
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
A better way would be to invent an all new imperial-style system for measuring computer storage. That way, there would be no chance for confusion with any base-10 system. For example:
korb = 3 bytes
fleb = 12 korbs
splin = 20 fleeb
fnit = 6 splins
Fnit = 6000 splins
frush = 48 fnits
watz = 18 frushes (19.5 frushes in the U.K.)
spoff = 480 watzen
nurm = 320 spoffs
long nurm = 80 nurm
munnel = 24 long nurm
This system easily covers storage capacities up to today's confusingly named "petabyte". Plus, there's no ambiguity about what you're measuring. Any of these units implies bytes of storage, which is a much cleaner solution.
The computer I'm using now has 71+29/32 watzes of system memory and 44+10/16 spoffs of disk space. There's no confusion about fuzzy definitions of "mega" with that measurement.
"'It's certainly not helpful to have a standard that keeps changing,' says Peter Becker, a scientist at the Federal Standards Laboratory..."
Wow, someone should tell the computer industry that.
"Some of the metal plugs were issued to countries that later vanished, including Serbia and the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese had to surrender theirs after World War II. Germany has acquired several weights, including the one issued to Bavaria in 1889 and the one that belonged to East Germany."
SURRENDER YOUR KILOGRAM!
A year is 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes (365.2424 Universal days)
Why don't we just get a big rocket, and alter the orbit so that it is exactly 365 days ? Or better yet 366 days, then we can give everyone a holiday (in rememberance of all of the species that were extinguished for our selfish ends).
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
1/100th of a meter is indeed a centimeter, but 1/100th of a kilogram is actually 100 grams.
centimeter > meter > kilometer
gram > 100 grams (hectogram) > kilogram
easy see?
Fry: heh, Yakov Smirnoff said it
Leela: No he didn't.
Seriously now, where in the fuck are all these bad moderations coming from? I mean informative... Christ on a crutch, man. Is informative right next to funny on the list or something?
/., namely the Troll with "Excellent" karma? I know they're out there: real trolls who delight in the spoiling of anything worthwhile, yet who have played nice and gotten excelent karma. Naturally, these dudes get to moderate sometimes.
Could it be that this a new plague decending on
When they do get mod points they fuck it up on purpose, for example moderating funny and obviously fictional posts informative. Or moderating things flamebait, so other mods who simply mod posts the same as other people also mod them flamebait or overrated.
It's almost enough to make me wonder if there aren't organized clans of these foul creatures about with the same old troll goal, to get us, the more or less rational and intelligent to respond with a, "Informative, WTF?" post. I think it's the lack of consequences. These little mofos get a kick out of making grown-ups angry, but they know that if they did that shit in RL they'd get their asses beat or worse. They just love that the only thing we can do is rant and rave and we being who we are can't always resist the temptation to post "WTF?"
Thinking about it though, maybe that's the reason the slash-dudes are begging us to meta mod? They know this is happening, but they can't weed out the people from the mod pool unless they get lots of unfairs in m2. I know I won't be giving obviously wrong moderations the benefit of the doubt that they were accidents anymore.
Okay, editors. You can mod me down now as offtopic now, I guess I'm done ranting. Just for God's sake don't mod this funny or informative.
I think we should digitalize it and put in Kazaa. There will be thousands of perfect copies in no time.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
The computer I'm using now has 71+29/32 watzes.
Are those watzen in UK frushes or US frushi? Ah, man this is so confusing! I say we all go back to counting in base-L.
The kilo shall be defined to be 1/80 of my weight. In return for the honor I promis to make the worlds people slim down.
Trolling is a art!
What clueless idiots we are in the US! It's obvious we should give up our strange system of measurement and switch to metrics.
I mean, what's not to love about a system based upon a weight who's mass keeps changing, ahhh and that ever accurate meter, you know the one that's defined by two scratches in a platinum bar? Now that's a quality definition!
Who came up with this system, some wierd Frenchman?
"My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I like it!" --Grandpa Simpson
he kilogram is shedding at an appreciable rate
you mean I'm actually losing weight without doing diets or a workout !!
one point twenty-one jigawatts?
:)
That's almost a bolt of lightning by degrading metric standards.
On a more serious note, does the declining metre have anything to do with the rising Canadian dollar? And they say that Canada doesn't matter. Humbug, I say.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
Sir, you are indeed a well-traveled man! You obviously have laid pipe across the globe.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
Except for the madonna version which would have
"Stop stealing Mass, you fucks"
written through it
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
Yep. Or they should say something masses 80kg... but that just sounds really stupid.
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
Uh oh did someone say France? Next thing you know the americans are going to want to call it the 'freedomgram'.
----- sXe
Once I have obtained the entire reference kilogram, I will change it to be whatever I want! People will be fad-dieting to lose the extra 20kg's they picked up last night! With my recent investments in Jenny Craig and Richard Simmons workout videos, I'll be "sweating to the oldies" all the way to the bank!
MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
We are under the impression that there's a 80% larger chance that a UK pint has actual beer in it, as well.
JADBP
Great. A kilogram is getting smaller? That means I'm getting fatter!!
Good thing the pound is nice and stable . . I couldn't stand for my quarter-pounders to get any smaller!!
anything i tell you will cloud your opinion.
The standard 1 kg block should be replaced by the 1 kg Christmas Fruit Cake. As everyone knows, it is indestructible, and only one exists in the entire world (people just keep mailing it around to each other every year).
---- ---- --- -- --- ------ Keep Cool But Do Not Freeze
there IS no smallest time-slice
Sure there is, 11ms. It might not be universal though, I'm using Windows 2000.