Posted on 04/20/2008 5:58:33 PM PDT by BGHater
In the more than a century since 'perfect' platinum-iridium cylinders were first used as the world's kilogram standards, their weights have mysteriously fluctuated. Scientists are rethinking what the measure means.
GAITHERSBURG, MD. -- Forty feet underground, secured in a temperature- and humidity-controlled vault here, lies Kilogram No. 20.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
SI is for those that find multiplying or dividing by anything other than 10 too difficult.
well that settles it then, it's definitely a yet to be studied and explained sub-atomic decay. The reason each sample is slightly different is because they were never atomically identical as they thought.
Problem solved. /s
NOT! Big hairy deal. It doesnt make one illiterate or less capable using a different unit.
Scientists -- even American scientists -- uniformly use SI. Are you seriously claiming that not having the sort of intuitive, reflexive grasp of a system of weights and measures that can only come from being immersed in it constantly is no disadvantage?
By the way, to everybody else in the thread who's blathering about changing gravitational constants and different local gravitational strength: MASS IS INDEPENDENT OF GRAVITY, YOU SIMPLETONS. My God, do you think that every single scientist in the world is a moron? Do you think that none of them is aware that gravity is locally variable?
Where is the US sample housed? Looks like being in a mountainous country produces greater gain in mass. Maybe a radiation effect? Cosmic rays? Panspermia?
“Now hold your hands about a meter apart. How much do you want to bet that your latter estimate is more inaccurate than your former?”
The foot is far more accurate and so is the inch. And what a stupid means of trying to justify the meter, an arbitrary unit of length. “Hold out your hands”??
You may be more accusomed to SI and therefore believe it is more user friendly so why is it that children have such a hard time with it the world over? The meter fits nothing, not even the speed of light or a unit of Earthly measure, and don’t even get me started on the gram.
P.S. From a scientific standpoint, SI makes no practical sense and has nothing but POLITICAL merit.
Except that it isn't the evolutionary response. "Primadorol soup" apparently "evolved' from elements exposed to millions of years of exposure to cosmic gases, cooling millions of years of space rain which then made this soup of which pairs of living things crawled out of and evolved into everything.
You seem to think they are. You state that they need SI as though they cannot figure out any other units of measure.
(hint: They do every day and it works well for them.)
Le Grand K is the reference value against which all others are measured. It doesn't vary because it is defined to be THE kilogram. In reality it probably varies just as much as the other ones.
‘GAITHERSBURG, MD. — Forty feet underground, secured in a temperature- and humidity-controlled vault here, lies Kilogram No. 20.’
What am I overlooking?
When in doubt, blame it on global warming.
Dear Lord you are thick. And how, pray tell, is the grain defined? Well, currently it's defined as 64.8 (more or less) grams. Historically, though, it was defined as the weight of a wheat seed... hence "grain." You think that's more accurate than defining a weight based on a platinum-iridium cylinder kept in climate-controlled storage?
...useless definition as no one here can possibly use an instrument that accurate.
And yet it's a big deal when a kilogram standard fluctuates by 0.0000000019%.
The kilo is a useless measurement and was nothing more than an abitrary measurement.
"Arbitrary?" It was initially defined as the mass of one liter (1000 cubic centimeters) of pure water at a fixed temperature, which is a hell of a lot less arbitrary than the weight of a frickin' seed.
P.S.S. I am a scientist and work within an advanced research and development group for one of the leaders in a particiular industry and we don't use SI. No need to use a French system of conversion from other more useful values. (Another Hint: Newton didn't say F=ma)
I know that you have been told this before but I will say it again.
Evolution, no matter how many times you say it does, does not cover the origin of life. Repeating that it does even thought you have been corrected numerous time borders on the deliberate spreading of untruths.
No, you are thick. All kinds of people have come up with all kinds of units of measure for good reason and along come the French to change it to some arbitrary units of measure. Just look at your silly conversion factors, 0.453592338 kg of that 64.8 of the other. They changed the meter from one measurement to another once the other didn’t work out. The kilogram is a volumetric mass versus a weight against standard gravity, etc, etc, etc.
SI is what you get when politics and committees get involved.
Sure, it makes sense to folks who recognize that there’s a fundamental flaw in the metric system ~ namely, it is impossible to establish a uniform standard for anything everywhere simultaneously.
“”Arbitrary?” It was initially defined as the mass of one liter (1000 cubic centimeters) of pure water at a fixed temperature, which is a hell of a lot less arbitrary than the weight of a frickin’ seed.”
Initially an arbitrary measurement, what is it today?? What does a mass of one liter equal? Anything in the real world?? Anything? Again, arbitrary. Was then and still is. So is the meter. As I have said before, they changed it from a measurement against the Earth to the speed of light. Yeah, that’s stable and neither measurement is any whole number of value.
What you need an "intuitive grasp" of is space in 17 dimensions silly, primitive Hu-Mon.
Yes, I’m saying it is not a disadvantage.
By the way, I also believe that people who grow up knowing French are not at a disadvantage, linguistically, as compared with those who know English.
There is no disadvantage for mastery of either COMPLETELY DIFFERENT language, so how, on Earth, can having different units be such a limiting problem?
Flaws in the cosmic chips that undergird our perception of the universe ~ something like that.
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