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Ryan Falkenstein-Smith and Amy Mensch, both wearing lab coats and gloves, stand in the lab next to a black camera-like device on a table.

The Sound of Soot: How a Strange Noise Can Keep Us Safer From Fires

February 26, 2024

Amy Mensch, Ryan Falkenstein-Smith

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Where there’s fire, there is soot. And where there is soot, there is … noise.

NIST researchers Yoshi Ohno and Jane Li demonstrate different types of lighting in their lab on NIST’s campus in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

The Eye of the Beholder: How Lighting Affects Our Color Perception

June 6, 2023

Megan King

Remember the social media controversy over the color of a dress? That’s a lighthearted example of how illumination can affect the things we see, but this is serious science.

flat map of world. Gray continents. Blue and green colors for oceans.

Monitoring the Oceans’ Color for Clues to Climate Change

April 13, 2021

B. Carol Johnson

It is February 1994 and I am on the research vessel R/V Moana Wave off the coast of Lanai, Hawaii, with the team of the Marine Optical BuoY (MOBY) project. The water is incredibly blue, and I can’t help but be awestruck by the enormous energy, momentum, power and depth of the ocean as I watch the

A wood-framed round dial face with numbers running from 0 to 35, with the 25 gradation marked in red.

Unidentified Museum Objects, Vol. III

April 16, 2018

Fran Webber

Much like your attic, garage or basement, the NIST archives are home to quite a number of arcane objects of unclear origin and purpose. We periodically collect these victims of misplaced paperwork and present them in a series we call "Unidentified Museum Objects." We invite you to put on your

Developing the APTitude to Design New Materials, Atom-by-Atom

January 12, 2017

Paul Blanchard

Cars, buildings, computer chips, you and me and the air we breathe, everything is made of atoms. We learn this in elementary school, because, well, it’s an elementary fact. But we seldom think about it because we are big, and atoms are small—so small that, even with the help of the most powerful of