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Taking Measure

Just a Standard Blog

Chemistry

Detecting the Flavors of Important Elements With Neutron Depth Profiling

November 17, 2021

The first five minutes of any presentation I give on neutron depth profiling are usually met with blank stares from my audience. This, I hope, is not something

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Clear as Glass: Studying Drug-Delivery Materials as a NIST SURF Student

October 6, 2021

This summer was an interesting one, to say the least. I was in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program offered by the National Institute of

Making Measurements With a Fine-Toothed Comb

September 22, 2021

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

Eavesdropping on Hormones to Help Understand Reproduction

July 21, 2021

Every vertebrate on the planet has evolved a complex system that uses small molecules called hormones to communicate directives to isolated tissues that impact

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

June 23, 2021

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) research chemists Melissa Phillips and Ben Place are working to create a Standard Reference Material (SRM)

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

June 16, 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

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

May 11, 2021

In an essay titled “ The end of artefacts, ” Nobel laureate and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) fellow William D. Phillips details how

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

May 5, 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

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

May 3, 2021

Callie Higgins is a materials research engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). She studies a special branch of additive

NIST Lends a Hand to Hand-Sanitizer Manufacturers

March 18, 2021

Like everyone on the planet, our organization, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), became concerned with the COVID-19 outbreak in March

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