[zeugma]

Interesting. I didn't know that the kilogram was the only measurement standard we currently have that is based on a physical object.

[RockinRight]

I propose a new unit of weight. We shall call it the “Obama.”

The weight of One Obama is the equivalent of the total amount of bovine excrement that can fit in the Oval Office at one time.

[Paladin2]

The SI system is global hegemony on the part of France.

[kidd]

All of the lab work that I oversee has to use instrumentation that is traceable to NIST standards.

I wonder how a scale is supposed to be calibrated to Plank’s constant?

IOW - it is commendable that NIST is attempting to use standards that have greater stability, but how practical is the new standard?

[antiRepublicrat]

The last one we lost was the meter, which had some relation to the distance from the equator to the North Pole, and made a metal bar that length. Then they found out that Earth measurement wasn’t right, and kept the bar as the standard. Then they defined it as some wavelength of an atom that matched the bar’s length. Now they define it by the speed of light, with something about relativity thrown in.

The all of these will continue to get redefined as science improves our understanding of the world. The funny part is that they redefine it at about what we currently think it is, giving some strange definitions.

[Buckeye McFrog]

not sure I like the idea of all that Carbon 12-Platinum-Iridium being shot around at my local deli counter...

[Fundamentally Fair]

I'm still rooting for the metric calendar and clock.

Think how much faster the day would go by if it were only 10 hours long...

[kosciusko51]

This assumes that these natural "constants" are really constant.

[The Great RJ]

Converting to the metric system would seriously tax our public education system. Imagine having to rewrite text books with politically correct stories of how the meter was originally developed by aboriginal people before it was rediscovered by the French or how African tribal people weighed things in kilograms centuries before the French or how the entire metric system was conceived by Muslims. It just wouldn't be politically correct to say that a bunch of white guys in powdered wigs invented the metric system anymore than to say that white guys in powdered wigs wrote the US Constitution

[castlebrew]

What??!! there's 7 constants?

I thought there were only these:

1. Death

2. Taxes

3. Politicians are crooked