Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Taking Measure Blog Posts

Search Taking Measure

Get Taking Measure blogs
delivered to your inbox.

Displaying 151 - 175 of 423

a small box with cable pairs of cable outlets coming out of either end. the box top is open and there is circuitry and a white nipple shaped piece in the center.

Working to Improve Small-Scale MRIs: My Summer as a SURF Student at NIST

September 28, 2021

Emily Buchanan

I didn’t really know what to expect on the first day of my virtual Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). At 12:00 p.m., with my second cup of coffee in hand, I sat down at my desk and hopped on the first of many video

overlapping wavelengths of light enter from the left and pass into the optical frequency comb device. The image shows a visualization of the different wavelengths separated into even increments.

Making Measurements With a Fine-Toothed Comb

September 15, 2021

Rebecca Jacobson

To many people, a measurement sounds mundane, like marking ticks on a ruler or reading the line on a thermometer. It’s a piece of data. And they tend to think that improved measurements look like finer and finer ticks on a ruler — which doesn’t seem very exciting. But making new measurements is more

collage of images from the WTC disaster, a blueprint of an airplane, a representation of one of the towers, the word modeling

Analyzing the Aftermath of the Twin Towers Aircraft Impacts

August 12, 2021

Steven W. Kirkpatrick

I consider myself lucky to have been able to perform contract engineering research and consulting for my entire career. The work environment has been somewhere between industry research and academia. I’ve had opportunities to work with recognized experts at universities, national laboratories, in

a collage showing images of a crowd of people, an elevator, the word evacuation, a stairwell with the stairs marked as 1.5 meters wide, an icon of a telephone with the numbers 911, and a camera

Inside the Towers on 9/11: My Story of Investigating the WTC Evacuation

August 11, 2021

Jason Averill

The kickoff meeting On Nov. 1, 2002, in a small conference room on the Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the trio of outside experts ( Dennis Mileti, Guylene Proulx and Norman Groner) hired to work on evacuation and emergency communication

a collage including images of a radio tower, a handheld radio, a fire engine, and the word Connection

How 9/11 Changed Me and First Responder Communications

August 11, 2021

Dereck Orr

If you remember Sept. 11, 2001, that day is most likely imprinted on your mind like no other day. You remember what you were doing and who you were with. You may remember feeling confused and a sense of utter disbelief as you watched the results of the first plane’s impact on 1 World Trade Center

collage showing rubble from the collapse of the towers, a mock up of a section of the towers, scientists looking at structural steel and the words Building and Fire Codes

20 Years Later: NIST's World Trade Center Investigation and Its Legacy

August 5, 2021

S. Shyam Sunder

The collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was one of the worst-ever building disasters in recorded history — killing 2,749 people. More than 400 emergency responders were among those killed, the largest loss of life for this group in a

collage of images of the 9/11 disaster, some are shaped like puzzle pieces, there is a representation of frames of film

Putting Together the Big Picture for the World Trade Center Disaster Investigation

August 4, 2021

Kathryn Butler

Imagine assembling a jigsaw puzzle of more than 14,000 pieces without an image on the box showing what the final picture will look like. Imagine that important pieces were missing and needed to be searched for. And imagine that this puzzle was four-dimensional, involving time as well as space. This

collage of blueprints for buildings and an airplane, a pile of rubble, a live fire test of a simulated office, and the word Reconstruction

Reconstructing the Fires That Brought Down WTC 1, 2 and 7

August 4, 2021

Richard G. Gann

Everyone has a story about where they were when they heard about the disaster universally called “9/11.” Mine begins in Ottawa, Canada. As chance would have it, I was there for a meeting of the Fire Safety Engineering Subcommittee of the International Organization for Standardization. One of the

collage of images from the WTC disaster and the NYC skyline with a representation of a DNA molecule and the letters DNA,

Reflections on Assisting With the 9/11 World Trade Center DNA Identifications

August 3, 2021

John Butler

On Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, I walked to work from my home in Olde Towne Gaithersburg, Maryland, and arrived at my office shortly before 9 a.m. I had just returned from an International Society for Forensic Genetics meeting in Germany where I had spoken on a new DNA test our NIST team had developed

DNA Mixture Interpretations: A Q&A With NIST’s John Butler

July 22, 2021

Whether from skin cells, saliva, semen or blood, DNA from a crime scene is often collected and tested in a lab to see if a suspect’s DNA is likely a contributor to that sample or not. But every DNA sample tells a different story, and some samples are easier to interpret than others. The simplest

Woman with a ball cap on petting a reclining cheetah with another cheetah in the background the

Eavesdropping on Hormones to Help Understand Reproduction

July 16, 2021

Erin Legacki

Every vertebrate on the planet has evolved a complex system that uses small molecules called hormones to communicate directives to isolated tissues that impact everything in the body from eating to producing babies. This hormonal communication between tissues is critical during reproductive

masked man in a white lab coat holding up a frozen container in a laboratory

Creating a PFAS-Contaminated Meat SRM: A Q&A With NIST Chemists Melissa Phillips and Ben Place

June 21, 2021

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) research chemists Melissa Phillips and Ben Place are working to create a Standard Reference Material (SRM) to help industry and regulators detect the hazardous industrial chemical PFAS in meat. SRMs are meticulously measured materials that

three figures survey reference data on their computer screen while looking on at a turbine

50 Years of the ‘Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data’: A Q&A With Editors Allan Harvey and Don Burgess

June 9, 2021

Reference data’s connection to the public is indirect yet often very important. For example, a town’s electricity could come from a steam power plant in which reference data for the properties of steam was used to design the turbines. In this way, reference data provides important foundations to

woman in a plaid shirt using a set of VR goggles and hand controls, a man sits at a computer in the background

Passing Photons Through Chicken, VR for First Responders, and 3D-Printed Metal: A Sample of Stories on NIST Social Media

June 7, 2021

Riley Wilson

Sending “spooky” pairs of photons through biological materials, using virtual reality to test emergency communications technology, bolstering confidence in the latest manufacturing techniques — NIST has no shortage of exciting developments, despite our largely remote workforce at the moment. Here

see through human body with organs on the left with an arrow pointing to a schematic of the body cube, represented by a CAD drawing with some multicolor inlaid chips that culture cells for different organs

Creating and Commercializing a Human ‘Body Cube’ for Testing New Drugs

May 26, 2021

Mandy Esch

Growing up, I always had a love for living things, so I went off to college and got an undergraduate degree in biology. After that, I realized I wanted to specialize in an area that could help people live better lives and conquer diseases, so I decided to get a Ph.D. in biotechnology. During my Ph.D

small grains of a reference material disappearing or floating away. two lasers, red and blue, which represent the two different colored lasers used by the instrument. Also visible are linear molecules of carbon dioxide (collections of three balls), CO2.

Fundamental Constants Are the Future of Measurement. Can They Replace Artifacts for Measuring Isotopes?

May 10, 2021

Adam J. Fleisher

In an essay titled “ The end of artefacts, ” Nobel laureate and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) fellow William D. Phillips details how scientists came to realize the original vision of the metric system, or the International System of Units (SI) — a system of units “for all

Adam Jacoff in the NIST Robot Test Facility in the obstacle course with a robot

Search and Rescue Robotics: A Q&A With NIST's Adam Jacoff

April 28, 2021

Adam Jacoff has been a robotics research engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) since 1988. His research has focused on developing a variety of new robotic capabilities and designing comprehensive suites of tests to foster innovation throughout the robotics community

masked man with baseball cap seated at a lab bench pipetting samples

Improving Forensic Chemistry: A Q&A With NIST's Ed Sisco

April 28, 2021

Ed Sisco has been a research chemist within the Surface and Trace Chemical Analysis Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) since 2014. His research has focused on chemical identification systems for forensics, homeland security and other applications. Ed is a finalist for

Callie Higgins in a lab. She is standing in front of a reflective screen surrounding an atomic force microscope.

3D Printing With Light: A Q&A With NIST's Callie Higgins

April 28, 2021

Callie Higgins is a materials research engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). She studies a special branch of additive manufacturing called vat photopolymerization, which uses light to solidify a liquid resin layer by layer into a 3D object. Callie is a finalist for a

A grid of 12 obviously old photos individuals' face from their shoulder up. In each photo is a four-digit code for that person

The Pandemic Poet and Other Tales From a NIST ‘Genealogy’ Project

April 28, 2021

Keith Martin

One of my work-from-home projects was getting to know the staff of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, then called the National Bureau of Standards, or NBS) in 1918. Quite an interesting bunch. Among them was a chemist turned pandemic poet; one of the earliest known Asian

digital clock in orbit around Earth. The clock face reads 11:59:60.

Everyday Time and Atomic Time: Part 5

April 23, 2021

Judah Levine

This is part 5 in a series. Read part 1 , part 2 , part 3 and part 4 . The Leap Second Solution When atomic clocks were developed in the 1950s, scientists needed to match the time and frequency of these new devices to the long-standing astronomical definitions of these same parameters in order to

pair of feet standing on either side of the prime meridian in Greenwich, England

Everyday Time and Atomic Time: Part 4

April 20, 2021

Judah Levine

This is part 4 in a series. Read part 1 , part 2 and part 3 . Greenwich Mean Time In the previous essay I introduced mean solar time, which averaged the annual variation in apparent solar time so as to generate a time scale that was more consistent with the time scale generated by clocks that used a

flat map of world. Gray continents. Blue and green colors for oceans.

Monitoring the Oceans’ Color for Clues to Climate Change

April 13, 2021

B. Carol Johnson

It is February 1994 and I am on the research vessel R/V Moana Wave off the coast of Lanai, Hawaii, with the team of the Marine Optical BuoY (MOBY) project. The water is incredibly blue, and I can’t help but be awestruck by the enormous energy, momentum, power and depth of the ocean as I watch the

wood pendulum clock hung on a wood paneled wall

Everyday Time and Atomic Time: Part 3

April 9, 2021

Judah Levine

This is part 3 in a series. Read part 1 and part 2 . Oscillators and Clocks In the previous essay, I introduced the ideas that frequency and time interval are closely related concepts, and that the time at any instant is a count of the number of basic time intervals (such as the second) that have

Everyday Time and Atomic Time: Part 2

April 5, 2021

Judah Levine

This is part 2 in a series. Read part 1. A short history of frequency Frequency was originally considered to be the province of musicians. The pitches or frequencies of the notes in a musical scale are defined by ratios — octaves, for example, where the frequency of the higher note is twice the

Was this page helpful?

Search Taking Measure

Subscribe