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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."

11 of 964 comments (clear)

  1. I can't believe by MoThugz · · Score: -1, Troll

    ...that some people actually gives a rat's ass on what the current kilogram is based upon. It's 1000 grams. Take the weight of whatever base item they're are using, and multiply it by a thousand.

    And what's wrong with using the present scales available on the market... don't tell me that the manufacturers actually brought their designers to this place and actually weigh it on their prototypes!

  2. Re:Counting Si by pod · · Score: 1, Troll

    Probably something to do with the varience of a flux capacitor.

    --
    "Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
  3. A new standard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Once, back in high school chemistry lab, my lab partner dared me to weigh my penis on the digital balance. (We only had one... it was a small school). The balance was in a separate room that couldn't be seen from the classroom. I took a quick look around the room and saw that everyone else was pretty much minding their business, doing their lab experiments. So, being the stupid high school student that I was, I marched back to the balance, unzipped, and flopped out my penis. It was semi-soft, but I didn't have time to get an erection. After a quick tare, I sat my penis on the balance and got a reading. I'll never forget what it read... "69.696 g" !!!! What are the odds?!! Anyway, I quickly zipped up and walked out just as a female student was walking back to mass something. The look on my face must have given me away, because she sure looked at me funny. But I just kept on walking, got back to my lab bench, and told my partner. He burst out laughing, realized everyone was looking at him strangely, and then shut up. That was the last we ever talked about the incident. I only remember it because of that reading... 69.696! Looking back, it was a pretty stupid thing to do. I could have been kicked out of school. And that balance had all sorts of nasty chemical residues on it. God knows what my penis was exposed to. I'm lucky I don't have cancer.

    Oh yeah, this story had a point to it. I was thinking, what if instead of platinum iridium standard, we use my high school penis as a standard instead. (It would get a lot more use that way.) To convert to kilograms, just say that a kilo is 14.348 penises.

    1. Re:A new standard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      I'm lucky I don't have cancer.

      From the sound of it, you probably aren't that old. Some known carcinogens can take decades to cause cancer. That's why it took so long to discover that chemicals such as benzene are carcinogens. Benzene used to be used everywhere in chem labs, because everyone thought it was safe. Now, everyone fears it. (Although there are much, much worse carcinogens out there. The gasoline in your car contains ~5% benzene.) Although most high school chem labs don't have anything too bad in them, you might want to check your penis out every so often.

  4. ... because the Iraqis stole by fireman · · Score: -1, Troll

    some grams.

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    M.
  5. Re:My pee smells... from asparagus? by switched4OSX · · Score: 0, Troll

    Watersports, pfft. Dirty sanchez is where its at. Uknown German: Essen mein scheisse Cartman's Mom: Alrighty then

  6. Make your time gentlemen... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    You have just been trolled.
    All you base are belong to us!
    Myuh ha ha ha ha...

  7. Re:Metric is better for measuring cocks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    How the fuck is this flamebait you shit for brains moderator?! This was one of the most intelligent posts on Slashdot today. It was on topic, insightful, interesting and funny all in one fell swoop. Why is it that moderators seem to be getting dumber with each passing year? Stupid fucking asses. They have no idea what a decent Slashdot post consists of. The way I see it, if the post doesn't illicit some kind of kneejerk reaction, then it's not worth reading. The above post was carefully written and calculated to get just such a reaction from readers. This doesn't make it a troll however... That is where the moderators have failed yet again in fair moderation. If it were a troll, it would just be a non-sequitir. As it is, this post was quote ingeneous. Leave it to idiots to mod posts down that they don't like nd this is what you get... Oh well. They'll get theirs eventually. Idiots.

  8. Re:A better solution... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Doritos taste like shit and they get nasty orange shit all over your hands.

    I fucking hate those fuckers.

    Anyone who eats that shit deserves the fat ugliness they will recieve.

  9. Back to the topic of the post... by divide+overflow · · Score: 0, Troll

    Gee, seems that nobody has anything particularly important to say about the topic of the post...virtually all the comments are off-topic.

    I believe the difficulty of defining the kilogram is twofold. We traditionally measure mass as weight, the attraction of mass by gravity (usually the Earth's gravity). But it is difficult to measure either quantity precisely.

    Mass is usually defined as the number of atoms of a given atomic weight, a difficult thing to measure accurately given the total number of atoms in a gram of any element. And due to the weakness of the gravitational force and its attraction over considerable distances it is one of the forces that has been difficult to measure as accurately as other forces, leaving the Gravitational Constant (G) as one of the physical constants defined to a relatively lower degree of accuracy than most other universal constants. The difficulty of measuring both these quantities accurately at the same time combine to make it difficult to define a precise standard mass.

  10. Re:Can someone help me convert here?? by CokeBear · · Score: 0, Troll

    (Score: +1 Yummy)

    --
    Reality has a liberal bias