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Physical Measurement Laboratory

News and Updates

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NIST’s Electro-Optic Laser Pulses 100 Times Faster Than Usual Ultrafast Light

September 27, 2018

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used common electronics to build a laser that pulses 100 times more often than...

NIST Updates Forensic Standard Reference Materials

September 19, 2018

At forensic science labs, analysts literally weigh the evidence. They also measure it in other ways. They use microscopes, DNA profiling kits, chemical...

Introducing the ‘Smart Mirror’

September 17, 2018

Lasers play roles in many manufacturing processes, from welding car parts to crafting engine components with 3D printers.* To control these tasks, manufacturers...

Transparent image shaped like wedding cake atop a honeycomb-like lattice with green squiggly lines

A Novel Graphene Quantum Dot Structure Takes the Cake

August 23, 2018

In a marriage of quantum science and solid-state physics, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used magnetic fields to...

An electron micrograph showing many blue-colored nanoscale (billionth of a meter) particles of varying sizes and shapes scattered atop a silicon wafer.

Connecting the (Nano) Dots: NIST Says Big-Picture Thinking Can Advance Nanoparticle Manufacturing

August 22, 2018

Nanoparticle manufacturing, the production of material units less than 100 nanometers in size (100,000 times smaller than a marble), is proving the adage that...

Helping the Microchip Industry Go (Very Low) with the Flow

August 22, 2018

A new study by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has uncovered a source of error in an industry-standard calibration...

Exactly how loud is that jackhammer?

August 17, 2018

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...

NIST Chip Lights Up Optical Neural Network Demo

July 26, 2018

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have made a silicon chip that distributes optical signals precisely across a miniature...

The Shape in Water

July 23, 2018

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...

Through a Prism Brightly: A New Way to Measure the Light-Warping Properties of Hyperbolic Metamaterials

June 18, 2018

Manipulating light in a variety of ways—shrinking its wavelength and allowing it to travel freely in one direction while stopping it cold in another--hyperbolic...

Two seated people in bunny suits look at a bluish computer image

NIST Neutron Detection Method: Long-Sought Workaround to Helium Shortage?

June 11, 2018

Doctors use X-rays to see inside people, and scientists use neutrons to peer inside advanced materials and devices such as fuel cells to better understand and...

A New Way to Measure Energy in Microscopic Machines

June 8, 2018

What drives cells to live and engines to move? It all comes down to a quantity that scientists call “free energy,” essentially the energy that can be extracted...

Cartoon with man standing on falling blue cube representing Earth, decorated with clumps of clock faces, with yellow sun at right.

NIST Atomic Clock Comparison Confirms Key Assumptions of ‘Einstein’s Elevator’

June 4, 2018

By comparing different types of remote atomic clocks, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have performed the most accurate...

Convective Accelerometer

May 24, 2018

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...

NIST Puts the Optical Microscope Under the Microscope to Achieve Atomic Accuracy

May 22, 2018

Over the last two decades, scientists have discovered that the optical microscope can be used to detect, track and image objects much smaller than their...

CNST Releases Spring 2018 Edition of the CNST News

May 22, 2018

The NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST) is pleased to announce the release of the Spring 2018 edition of the CNST News. This quarterly...

Neutrons by the Numbers

May 21, 2018

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

May 9, 2018

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...

Man standing working on a silicon carbide device

NIST Electronics Engineer Named Service to America Medal Finalist

May 7, 2018

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researcher Allen R. Hefner, Jr., has been named a finalist for the 2018 Samuel J. Heyman Service to...

Taking The Heat: New High for NIST’s ‘Light Force’ Laser Power Meter

May 1, 2018

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have been developing a novel way of measuring laser power. Their device, called the...

The Secret Lives of Roots: Watching Crops Grow Beneath the Surface with Portable MRI

May 1, 2018

Nobody really knows what plant roots are doing when they’re at home. Digging up a plant exposes the roots, but destroys the soil’s natural fabric. Information...

Laboratory with computer screens mounted on the wall, and a table with instruments

NIST Team Shows Tiny Frequency Combs Are Reliable Measurement Tools

April 25, 2018

In an advance that could shrink many measurement technologies, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and partners have...

Desktop Cosmology: A Model of the Expanding Universe

April 23, 2018

When the universe was very young – about a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang – it underwent a sudden explosive expansion...

Alan Band working to install Yagi antenna on roof of AML Bldg.

Obituary: CNST Remembers Alan Band

April 18, 2018

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...

Worth the Weight: New International Guidelines Published for Manufacturing Load Cells

April 16, 2018

At the heart of every electronic weighing instrument is a device called a load cell, which takes a mechanical force and turns it into an electronic signal...

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