The kilogram is drifting.
Anurag said:
Scientists are now taking wise and immediate actions find an alternate to maintain the standard for mass. Even I am abit tensed about it 'cause you see, I am a science student doin' my A levels.
Alex said...
Don't worry, they aren't going to re-write the A level papers before next summer.
The formulae will still work, just the constants will change (and Casio will get another 20GBP from us all).
I remember A Level science and maths were things of wonder. Everything we had learnt at O'Level (or CSE/GCSE whatever they are now) turned out to be "approximate" or "works for 10% of the cases". Can you imagine after spending the whole of 6th form learning calculus , only to be told in University that for most examples you have to estimate, you can't fit a curve to it.
As for a changing standard. I grew up in a time where we still had a coin called a sixpence. It was worth 2.5p. The Kings head was still on the coins, and we were slowly converting from lbs and oz's to Kg, and from pints to litres. Imagine my culture shock when I emigrated from a 60% metric system to US Imperial with their short measure pints of just 16oz's!
For work I used to measure time in pico seconds, and lengths in nm. A few years ago I was living under the standards of knots and nautical miles at work, and trying to coerce lat/long onto an xy plot of a radar return measured in r/theta at a northerly latitude where the convergence of lines of longitude is significant over the 60 mile span of a radar.
Whatever we schooled for, it just set us up to learn faster in the real world.
As the world looks more closely at the details, the more there is to find and wonder at.
The dream is infinitely complex. It's an attention trap.
And there was me thinking it was defined by a litre of water at STP.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the vault in the chateau has an increased level of background radiation, and the material is decaying. If this one is not handled as much as the others, then there will be less dirt deposited on it, so the others could have gained weight. If it's that critical then they won't even want to clean it for losses and gains by abrasion and deposition of cleaning material.
Radio 4 ran a news article about how the atomic clock in London was drifting, and they were going to move it to the top of the Telecom Tower to change the gravity on it. Of course this was an elaborate April Fools, they even based April 1st on a defunct calendar, giving out the news story in late March.
It used to be 10³. But if it's drifting then I am not sure anymore.
ReplyDeleteAnd here I thought it was 1024. I'm confused. :)
ReplyDelete"And here I thought it was 1024. I'm confused. :)"
ReplyDeleteThere you have it. Some driftage already.
cocaine brother, cocaine!
ReplyDeleteApparently the greatest mystery of all is the fact that gravitational mass (F = G * (m1*m2) / R^2) equals to inertial mass (F = m * a). There is no physical or logical explanation as to why mass in the first formula is the same as the mass in the second. If we imagine that the gravitational constant is not the same across the universe ( 6.673E-11 m3/(kg sec2) then we may have the standard changing as well...
ReplyDeleteAll they have to do to protect it from the evil alien radiations is hide it under an aluminium foil hat. Works for me. My brain cells have stopped vanishing now.
ReplyDeleteAlex,
ReplyDeleteAll atomic clocks drift. Because Time is not identical everywhere. Only very subtle differences on Earth, but they get noticed.
Indeed, by moving an atomic clock higher up, the gravity would be slightly modified, affecting Space-Time and therefore its readings. Universal Time is an average of all measured times on our planet. (And an essential calculation for accurate GPS positioning.)
Now, moving an atomic clock because it's drifting, that's a good one! For the initiated.
"That's no hydroxyl ion, that's my wife." LOL!
Sniffles,
Have you checked the mass of your doses? Gotta be careful with those, bro'. Might be 50 micrograms missing.
Dibutil Ftalat,
I think Einstein demonstrated that gravitational mass is identical to inertial mass because gravity is, by definition, an acceleration. Caused by the bending of space-time. The real mystery is, how does the bending create an acceleration? Maybe the expected discovery of the elusive graviton will bring some answers to that.
Gravitation = acceleration means that both mass concepts remain identical, whatever the value of g in the cosmos.
Buh-bye now, gotta go. A kilo of smooches to y'all. "Give or take a few cows", as my granny would say.
Eo said:
ReplyDeleteAnd here I thought it was 1024. I'm confused. :)
The mathematical/physical and the digital "Kilo" have nothing to do with each other, it's just a convention that they have the same prefix "Kilo".
A mathematical Kilo is just another name for 1000, whereas we should speak of the digital Kilo rather as "k" as in k-bit (instead of kilobit), as it doesn't accurately stand for 1000:
A k-bit of digital information units can represent 1024 charakters, which is almost 1000 or almost a "kilo", hence we wrongly speak of a kilobit.
Eo, your "Kilo" refers to a mass of 1000 gramms, which is in fact 1 Kilogramm.
It's easier to say Kilo instead of Kilogramm.
Eo, are you even more confused now?
Dr Pascal, can you help explain better? I presently seem not to be in the right mood for intelligible explanations :-(
Don't worry, I was just joshing, I am aware of these details. :)
ReplyDeleteIf we believe Miami Vice, I think Kilos was reduced to "keys", particularly in reference to uncut drugs.
ReplyDeleteWhen we got out of college wages had started being represented as so many "k" pounds. As CS majors we all said that we'd assume the 1024 multiplier, and hold our employers to it.
Anyone still concerned about Kb and kbps must surely be in the dark ages - even PC ram and thumb drives are in GB now.
I was going to mention the 10^3 v's 2^10, but decided we didn't need go there.
Explain what, Beep? Atomic clocks drifting, or gravitational and inertial mass? Or both?
ReplyDeleteScientists are now taking wise and immediate actions find an alternate to maintain the standard for mass. Even I am abit tensed about it 'cause you see, I am a science student doin' my A'levels.
ReplyDeleteSorry, the anonymous was me. I pressed onto the wrong button. :)
ReplyDeleteAnurag,
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, they aren't going to re-write the A level papers before next summer.
The formulae will still work, just the constants will change (and Casio will get another 20GBP from us all).
I remember A Level science and maths were things of wonder. Everything we had learnt at O'Level (or CSE/GCSE whatever they are now) turned out to be "approximate" or "works for 10% of the cases". Can you imagine after spending the whole of 6th form learning calculus , only to be told in University that for most examples you have to estimate, you can't fit a curve to it.
As for a changing standard. I grew up in a time where we still had a coin called a sixpence. It was worth 2.5p. The Kings head was still on the coins, and we were slowly converting from lbs and oz's to Kg, and from pints to litres. Imagine my culture shock when I emigrated from a 60% metric system to US Imperial with their short measure pints of just 16oz's!
For work I used to measure time in pico seconds, and lengths in nm. A few years ago I was living under the standards of knots and nautical miles at work, and trying to coerce lat/long onto an xy plot of a radar return measured in r/theta at a northerly latitude where the convergence of lines of longitude is significant over the 60 mile span of a radar.
Whatever we schooled for, it just set us up to learn faster in the real world.
As the world looks more closely at the details, the more there is to find and wonder at.
Alex
Fine post and examples there, Alex.
ReplyDeleteAmong other things, it explains why the metric system is an international standard: its unit names always have the same meaning!
Plus, they're not based on something as immodest as the body measures of some long-departed king.
Louis the 14th: "I am the State."
Henry the 8th: "I am the standard of physics. Metric system, my royal 33 cm foot!"
[As Wikipedia would say, "quote unsourced".] ;-)