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Physical Measurement Laboratory

News and Updates

Displaying 401 - 425 of 1555
worker wearing hearing protection

Exactly how loud is that jackhammer?

When a jackhammer starts pounding outside your window at 7 o’clock on a Monday morning, you might find it annoying. For the worker who is running that...
Illustration of light ricocheting from a cantilever that's probing a petide sample in water

The Shape in Water

Tinkering with a method they helped develop over the last few years, scientists have for the first time used it to measure at the nanometer scale the...
Microscopic image of convective accelerometer containing

Convective Accelerometer

NIST’s Michael Gaitan and his colleagues patented a new type of acceleration sensor in the late 1990s. Known as the “convective accelerometer,” it uses heated...
Alpha-Gamma Device Step 1

Neutrons by the Numbers

After years of research, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed and demonstrated a way to count the absolute...
illustration. gray disk. green rods come up from the disk.

Hanging by a Nanowhisker

If Alexander Yulaev and his colleagues had their druthers, they’d do away with whiskers altogether. These scientists don’t have anything against facial hair...
Alan Band working to install Yagi antenna on roof of AML Bldg.

Obituary: CNST Remembers Alan Band

Alan Band, an electrical engineer at NIST for more than 25 years who won the Institute’s Colleagues’ Choice award and was celebrated for his ability to mentor...
Illustration of a plasmomechanical oscillator

Doing the Nano-Shimmy

Imagine a single particle, only one-tenth the diameter of a bacterium, whose miniscule jiggles induce sustained vibrations in an entire mechanical device some...
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