The press seems very caught up in this. I have seen a number of recent articles. I think this is only a refinement that matters to metrologists.
A couple of more snippets from the article: ------------------------------------------------------------------- "This in some ways takes [the kilo] away from the ordinary man...and makes it much less accessible," John Hall, a Nobel Prize winning physicist from Boulder, Colo., warned the gathering. . . . Back when Dr. Quinn was director of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, he held one of three keys needed to open the safe where Le Grand K is stored, under a trio of glass domes resembling a nesting doll. Three different people hold the keys and must be present to open the safe, "like setting off a nuclear warhead," Dr. Quinn chuckles. Several dozen copies of the original are stored at national laboratories around the globe. Once every 50 years or so, scientists carry the copies by hand to Sèvres, just outside Paris, in little boxes, to compare them to the original. ---------------------------------------------------- Le Grande K is pretty inaccessible to the man on the street, and the "recipe" to get to lower order working standards accessible to the common man does not really matter much as long as the metrologists get it right and don't change things perceptibly. ________________________________ From: Pat Naughtin <[email protected]> To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, January 29, 2011 4:44:43 AM Subject: [USMA:49662] Le Grand K Dear Al, What will be the mass of the new kilogram as realised by the NIST watt metre? Will it try for the original mass of Le Grand K plus 50 micrograms or will the watt balance use the present mass of Le Grand K assuming that other secondary standards have lost 50 micrograms? I haven't seen any reference to the mass of the kilogram in any of the media. They seem more fascinated by the idea of a kilogram "weight" and by Terry Quinn's strange quote: "The new definitions are "as big a change as the introduction of the metric system during the French Revolution," says Terry Quinn, a dapper Briton who organized the seminar and once served as director of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, which ensures world-wide uniformity of measurements." Presumably the dapperness is important! The quote seems to me to be way over the top. See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704062604576106094010476886.html to see this quote in context. Cheers, Pat Naughtin LCAMS Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, see http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html Hear Pat speak at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lshRAPvPZY PO Box 305 Belmont 3216, Geelong, Australia Phone: 61 3 5241 2008 Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com/ to subscribe.
