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For decades, metrologists have strived to retire ‘Le Grand K’ — the platinum and iridium cylinder that for 126 years has defined the kilogram from a high-security vault outside Paris. Now it looks as if they at last have the data needed to replace the cylinder with a definition based on mathematical constants.
The breakthrough comes in time for the kilogram to be included in a broader redefinition of units — including the ampere, mole and kelvin — scheduled for 2018. And this week, the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) will meet in Paris to thrash out the next steps.
“It is an exciting time,” says David Newell, a physicist at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland. “It is the culmination of intense, prolonged efforts worldwide.”
[...] In 2011, the CIPM formally agreed to express the kilogram in terms of Planck’s constant, which relates a particle’s energy to its frequency, and, through E = mc2, to its mass. This means first setting the Planck value using experiments based on the current reference kilogram, and then using that value to define the kilogram. The CIPM’s committee on mass recommends that three independent measurements of Planck’s constant agree, and that two of them use different methods.
(Score: 3, Touché) by bob_super on Friday October 16 2015, @05:02PM
> Unlike you, I've used both systems long enough to actually understand how they work and the benefits of doing so.
Somebody doesn't read the threads he/she replies to.
> The fact is, that metric just sucks for cooking and other things that people actually do, and no amount of whitewashing and hand waving is going to change that.
The best part of 7 billion people agree with your point of view, and are awaiting your donations before they starve. Most have spent the last 50+ years hanging on to traditional tins cups so that they can try to pass grandma's recipes onto their children, and praying that the metric police doesn't discover great-grandpa's school ruler behind the firewood stacks. Buildings have been capped off at three stories to avoid the risk of metric-based collapse, and all speed signs are just being ignored for everyone's safety.
You are correct, I'm an idiot.