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Physical Measurement Laboratory

News and Updates

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Making Sure that Lumber Measures Up

March 1, 2017

For some, it is a shocking revelation. But most Americans eventually come to accept the fact that a “two by four” board is actually 1.5 inches by 3.5 inches (38...

Mystery of the Dark Solitons

February 24, 2017

When your heart beats, blood courses through your arteries in waves of pressure. These pressure waves manifest as your pulse, a regular rhythm unperturbed by...

NIST researcher Jodie Pope with the big blue ball

Better Flowmeters with the Big Blue Ball

February 24, 2017

Last year, upwards of 25 trillion cubic feet of natural gas were delivered to customers in the United States, and when it changed hands, nearly every cubic foot...

Introducing Xenos, NIST’s Largest Coordinate Measuring Machine

February 22, 2017

When you walk into the laboratory that houses NIST’s newest coordinate measuring machine (CMM), you might be puzzled at first about how engineers got it into...

Getting the Inside Story on Products with Computed Tomography

February 22, 2017

It is often the case that a valuable new industrial capability brings with it a whole new set of challenges for measurement science -- and thus, inevitably, for...

Light on the Rebound: ROSI Sees It from Every Angle

February 13, 2017

We see the world in reflection: Nearly all the light that enters our eyes has bounced off something first, bringing with it information about the nature of the...

Gauging Multi-Kilowatt Laser Power with the Pressure of Light

January 24, 2017

A multi-kilowatt laser beam can cut through steel and melt bricks into glass. Many industries use high-power lasers like these to precisely cut and weld metals...

Wearable ‘Watches’ to Monitor Your Blood Pressure

January 24, 2017

What if there were a wearable fitness device that could monitor your blood pressure continuously, 24 hours a day? Unfortunately, blood pressure (BP)...

School building with overlay of units and constants

Heads Up, High School Class of '19: New Measurement Unit Definitions Are Coming

January 23, 2017

Next year, scientists expect to change the way we define the basic units with which we measure our universe. An article by scientists at the National Institute...

Calibrating the Calibrator: The National Standard Neutron Source

January 17, 2017

Neutron detectors and sources play critical roles in national defense, homeland security, nuclear power plant control, radiation medicine, petroleum exploration...

NIST Physicists ‘Squeeze’ Light to Cool Microscopic Drum Below Quantum Limit

January 11, 2017

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have cooled a mechanical object to a temperature lower than previously thought possible...

President Obama Honors Federally-Funded Early-Career Scientists

January 10, 2017

On Jan. 9, 2017, President Obama named 102 scientists and researchers as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE...

How Sweet It Is: NIST Metrology and the Maple Syrup Industry

January 4, 2017

NIST is frequently asked to provide unusual, sometimes downright exotic, measurements and calibrations in support of U.S. commerce. But even old hands in the...

Illustration of strontium lattice atomic clock

JILA Atomic Clock Mimics Long-sought Synthetic Magnetic State in Solids

December 21, 2016

Using their advanced atomic clock to mimic other desirable quantum systems, JILA physicists have caused atoms in a gas to behave as if they possess unusual...

How To Tell When a Nanoparticle is Out of Shape

December 20, 2016

Nanoparticles -- those with diameters less than one-thousandth the width of a human hair -- are increasingly prevalent in high technology, medicine, and...

schematic of laser light interacting with a plasmonic gap resonator

NIST Device for Detecting Subatomic-Scale Motion Has Potential Robotics, Homeland Security Applications

December 15, 2016

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new device that measures the motion of super-tiny particles traversing...

In Search of ‘Sterile’ Neutrinos

December 9, 2016

Lately, neutrinos – the tiny, nearly massless particles that many scientists study to better understand the fundamental workings of the universe – have been...

Keeping a Sharp Eye on the Environment from Space

December 7, 2016

On Nov. 19, 2016, America’s most advanced weather satellite rocketed into orbit carrying six new, state-of-the-art instruments, dramatically enhanced...

CNST Releases Fall 2016 Edition of The CNST News

November 29, 2016

The NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology) (CNST) is pleased to announce the release of the Fall 2016 edition of The CNST News. This quarterly...

NIST Debuts Dual Atomic Clock — and a New Stability Record

November 28, 2016

What could be better than a world-leading atomic clock? Two clocks in one. Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have combined...

Man standing behind big silver equipment

Disseminating the New Kilogram: An International ‘Dry Run’

November 28, 2016

When the kilogram, the world’s basic unit of mass, gets a new definition in 2018, it will be based not on a physical artifact but a constant of nature. However...

For Wearable Electronic Devices, NIST Shows Plastic Holes Are Golden

November 23, 2016

In science, sometimes the best discoveries come when you’re exploring something else entirely. That’s the case with recent findings from the National Institute...

Universe’s Constants Now Known with Sufficient Certainty to Completely Redefine the International System of Units

November 22, 2016

Fundamental constants are physical quantities that are universal in nature. For example, the speed of light in vacuum and the charge of a single electron are...

Big G Redux: Solving the Mystery of a Perplexing Result

November 16, 2016

If you spend time in physics research circles, you may have heard of the big G controversy. The universal constant of gravitation, G – affectionately known as...

Seeing Light’s Effect on Atoms — Within Picoseconds

November 16, 2016

For the first time in a laboratory setting, NIST scientists have made stop-action x-ray measurements of the way visible light interacts with atoms and molecules...

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