For more context, sample reference materials from the NIST reference catalogue are not meant to be exceptionally high purity examples of the sample -- SRMs are usually commercially-produced products. The real value is that each sample comes with a datasheet with incredibly detailed and accurate measurements that are (as you said) used for calibration of measuring devices in industrial settings. To quote a Veritasium video about the topic from a few years ago[1], "the thing you're paying for is not the peanut butter, it's the knowledge of exactly what is in the peanut butter".
That’s $508 for two cartons for 400 cigarettes total, so $1.27 per cigarette. They’re not characterized like the peanut butter, they’re just manufactured to a specific QC standard.
California/New York prices are easily $0.75/cigg so it’s not that much more expensive.
Yes, it’s a bit frightening to know what a hidden dependency NIST is on many things. In my industry, all calibrations ultimately derive from physical NIST standards for resistance, frequency, etc.
This is why we should ditch Celsius for Kelvin. I never liked how we coupled 0 and 100 to where water freezes and boils under certain conditions. Kelvin doesn't rely on non-invariant reference points.
this is actually why i like fahrenheit the most... 0F is "really cold" and 100F is "really hot", whereas in celsius 0C is "kind of cold" and 100C is "uninhabitable". it makes sense for the 0-100 range to be reserved for temperatures frequently encountered in our habitat as humans i think...
This has always been my primary argument in favor of Fahrenheit. It makes sense for humans, which is all a majority of the population really cares about. In addition, it's more granular. Sometimes turning the thermostat up or down by 1C could be too much, where 1F is just right.
In science and math, I can see where having round numbers for commonly used temperatures would be useful, but if 0C and 100C are the only places that happens, it's not that hard to memorize 2 numbers.
You only think it makes sense for humans because it makes sense for you, where you live the same way you feel changing a thermostat by 1F is perfect but 1C is too much: that’s true for you, not universally.
Fahrenheit functionally requires you to be biased in order for it to seem like a good system.
Celcius is pretty intuitive actually. It takes atmospheric pressure into account, Water is pretty abundant on the surface of the planet, and life kinda depends on it. It's a remarkable substance and quite stable. I dont think theres another substance where we can see all three phases with kitchen appliances and still consume it. Equally good for bathing and drinking. I need steam to clean clothes and cook my food. Using water as a benchmark for how we measure temperature is remarkably useful.
That’s a biased view that leads to a scale only convenient for people living in higher latitudes. Now talk to someone living near the equator like Singapore, and 0F is unimaginably cold (even 40F is basically unheard of), and 100F is very hot but not extraordinarily so. Then you talk to someone living close to the arctic and the converse is true.
All this talk about 0F to 100F being frequently encountered probably reveals your local climate conditions more than it helps define a useful global standard for all humans. We should accept that humans live in very diverse conditions and such a scale won’t be useful for all.
Now I'm imagining some kind of timezone-like temperature unit that varies around the world, and a "100 things programmers should know about ___" post about all the intricacies and special cases.
Celsius maps nicely to the temperatures observed in a typical Finnish sauna. 100C is among the highest typical sauna temperatures (very relaxing in dry air), and afterwards you cool off with water around 0C
Also, having 100C as water temp for black tee and 80 for green tee is nice to remember
OF will still kill you faster than 100F, and most folks aren't comfortable at 50F.
It inspires the following idea: A nonlinear scale where ~72F is 0, and +X represents the same level of heat discomfort as -X represents cold discomfort.
Except 0F being “really cold” and 100F being “really hot” is a personal bias of yours based on where you’ve lived. It’s not true for everyone or everywhere.
And even if it were true, it still wouldn’t work. 100F in a dry environment is nice while, in a humid environment, 100F is awful. Same for 0F, a dry and static 0F is fine while a wet and windy 0F is killer.
I actually came around to Fahrenheit for the exact same reason. 0°F and 100°F are kind of the top and bottom of the temperature range I’m going to be experiencing and anything outside that is waaay too hot or cold. In Celsius a large portion of people have to flip to negative numbers regularly during the normal year, and everything between 45°C and 100°C is completely unused.
> 0°F and 100°F are kind of the top and bottom of the temperature range I’m going to be experiencing and anything outside that is waaay too hot or cold.
Food, saunas, the weather, a fever, and much more are often over 100F.
Aren’t you just remembering specific numbers though? Unless you’re trying to boil water unseen so that you can only see a thermometer, the specific 100°C mark isn't that useful.
There's nothing stopping the use of decimal points for Celsius. Though there's also nothing stopping decimal points in Fahrenheit, the rare instance where an imperial sub-unit doesn't make things go fucky.
I think that both the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales are now defined in terms of Kelvin and a formula. Most if not all of the units of measure are no longer related to their history except for an agreement to make the new units match the old ones at some point.
Sure technically yes, but also celsius is now technically defined as just Kelvin plus 273.15. Degrees have technically been redefined as exactly 1.380649×10^−23 joules
You can centrifuge it. Heavier molecules move closer to the bottom. Repeat until you reach the desired purity.
You need shitloads of ordinary water to extract a liter of heavy water. And I'd be surprised if there's any superheavy water in that, because tritium radioactively decays.
Fun fact: Heavy water is slightly toxic to humans. If you only drank heavy water, you'd die as it shifts the chemical reactions in your body out of balance. A moderate amount is fine though.
Interesting article but left me wondering why they don't use H1_2 O16 as the "standard water"? Surely you can make that (relatively) easily in a centrifuge by spinning out the lightest fraction of water.
[1]: https://youtu.be/esQyYGezS7c?t=226
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2020/02/nist-releases-...
Perhaps you would prefer some standard issue meat.
https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/product/sial/nist1546a
https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/product/sial/nist2781
https://shop.nist.gov/ccrz__ProductDetails?sku=1196a&cclcl=e...
California/New York prices are easily $0.75/cigg so it’s not that much more expensive.
I have recently realized we imported the western world in the most superficial ways.
(There is a reason it is common to drop the century when talking about years, humans are less skilled at numbers over 100)
And I know temperatures in Fahrenheit go higher but it is common to refer to Phoenix as "over 100" even when it's high can peak over 120.
Yep.
> humans are less skilled at numbers over 100)
No, the reason is that the century is constant and therefore carries no information. Where the century isn't constant, it never gets dropped.
In science and math, I can see where having round numbers for commonly used temperatures would be useful, but if 0C and 100C are the only places that happens, it's not that hard to memorize 2 numbers.
Fahrenheit functionally requires you to be biased in order for it to seem like a good system.
All this talk about 0F to 100F being frequently encountered probably reveals your local climate conditions more than it helps define a useful global standard for all humans. We should accept that humans live in very diverse conditions and such a scale won’t be useful for all.
Also, having 100C as water temp for black tee and 80 for green tee is nice to remember
It inspires the following idea: A nonlinear scale where ~72F is 0, and +X represents the same level of heat discomfort as -X represents cold discomfort.
And even if it were true, it still wouldn’t work. 100F in a dry environment is nice while, in a humid environment, 100F is awful. Same for 0F, a dry and static 0F is fine while a wet and windy 0F is killer.
Food, saunas, the weather, a fever, and much more are often over 100F.
450F vs 230C does not feel like anything gets easier there. Maybe in some highly technical baking there are some nice deltas that appear?
The other day I heard an American talk about a TV being 65 inches. Took me a while to understand they had a 165 centimeter diagonal television.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units
You need shitloads of ordinary water to extract a liter of heavy water. And I'd be surprised if there's any superheavy water in that, because tritium radioactively decays.
Fun fact: Heavy water is slightly toxic to humans. If you only drank heavy water, you'd die as it shifts the chemical reactions in your body out of balance. A moderate amount is fine though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Production_methods