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Callie Higgins in a lab. She is standing in front of a reflective screen surrounding an atomic force microscope.

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

April 28, 2021
Callie Higgins is a materials research engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). She studies a special branch of additive manufacturing called vat photopolymerization, which uses light to solidify a liquid resin layer by layer into a 3D object. Callie is a finalist for a
digital clock in orbit around Earth. The clock face reads 11:59:60.

Everyday Time and Atomic Time: Part 5

April 23, 2021
Judah Levine
This is part 5 in a series. Read part 1 , part 2 , part 3 and part 4 . The Leap Second Solution When atomic clocks were developed in the 1950s, scientists needed to match the time and frequency of these new devices to the long-standing astronomical definitions of these same parameters in order to
pair of feet standing on either side of the prime meridian in Greenwich, England

Everyday Time and Atomic Time: Part 4

April 20, 2021
Judah Levine
This is part 4 in a series. Read part 1 , part 2 and part 3 . Greenwich Mean Time In the previous essay I introduced mean solar time, which averaged the annual variation in apparent solar time so as to generate a time scale that was more consistent with the time scale generated by clocks that used a
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
wood pendulum clock hung on a wood paneled wall

Everyday Time and Atomic Time: Part 3

April 9, 2021
Judah Levine
This is part 3 in a series. Read part 1 and part 2 . Oscillators and Clocks In the previous essay, I introduced the ideas that frequency and time interval are closely related concepts, and that the time at any instant is a count of the number of basic time intervals (such as the second) that have
pipe organ

Everyday Time and Atomic Time: Part 2

April 5, 2021
Judah Levine
This is part 2 in a series. Read part 1. A short history of frequency Frequency was originally considered to be the province of musicians. The pitches or frequencies of the notes in a musical scale are defined by ratios — octaves, for example, where the frequency of the higher note is twice the
NIST physicist Judah Levine with the NIST time scale, a digital clock face reading 14:33:34 and a bank of atomic clocks.

Everyday Time and Atomic Time: Part 1

March 16, 2021
Judah Levine
As a physicist in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Time and Frequency Division, I have worked in the general area of operating atomic clocks and using output signals from them to distribute time and frequency information for more than 40 years. I am also a Fellow at JILA, an
Josephson voltage standard chip with penny for scale

From 1901 to 2021: Measurements Then and Now

February 25, 2021
Mark Esser
A lot has changed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the past 120 years. For one thing, we were known as the National Bureau of Standards for the first 87 years of our existence. Then, in 1988, we became the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), to
Chien-Shiung Wu USPS postage stamp

A ‘Forever’ Stamp and a Discovery That Changed Physics Forever

February 16, 2021
Katie Rapp
With a new “forever” stamp honoring "First Lady of Physics" Chien-Shiung Wu, we have come very close to seeing a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researcher on a U.S. postage stamp. Over the course of six months in 1956, Wu worked with researchers Ernest Ambler (who went on to
cartoon of a young woman at her desk speaking by webcam with another person.

The NIST Summer Undergraduate Fellowship Program Goes Virtual

January 27, 2021
Brandi Toliver
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) designed the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Program to inspire undergraduate students to pursue careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) through a unique research experience that supports our mission
the cryogenic quantum testbed, a sophisticated metallic gold electronic device

Is Your Qubit Better Than My Qubit?

January 21, 2021
Corey Rae McRae
I had been studying superconducting quantum computing for seven years before I was stumped by this seemingly simple question: How do I know if my qubit is better than your qubit? Quantum computers could ultimately unlock the capability to solve hard problems in chemistry, cryptography and quantum
a collage of images. The number "2020" is surrounded by images of NIST staff George Gibson, Matt Staymates and Yamali Hernandez, a poster for the movie "The Last Artifact," an image of bikers racing up a hill, and a rifle bullet in a glass vial.

Need Some Good News? NIST’s 2020 Highlights

December 16, 2020
Mark Esser
2020 has been a challenging year, but we at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have worked as hard as we can to fulfill our mission for the American people: to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in
Film crew films a pair NIST researchers operating the NIST Kibble balance

‘The Last Artifact’ Brings Metrology to TV

August 20, 2020
Jason Stoughton
Remember that documentary you saw that finally explained metrology and why measurements are critical to practically every aspect of modern life? Yeah, neither do I. Probably because that documentary doesn’t exist … Or does it? The Last Artifact, a new one-hour film that PBS stations are planning to
Zach Levine in his kitchen wearing an orange and white striped apron and chef's hat

Minding your Peas and Carrots: Please Try This at Home

July 10, 2020
Ron Cowen
NIST physicist Zachary Levine doesn’t cook that often, but when he does it can easily turn into a science experiment. Two years ago, after he and his wife had endured a week of under-baked cookies and chicken that took forever to roast, Levine wasn’t content to simply recalibrate his oven according
NIST physicist Elizabeth Donley and Compact Atomic Clock

Keeping Time at NIST

June 18, 2020
Mark Esser
Einstein is reported to have once said that time is what a clock measures. Some say that what we experience as time is really our experience of the phenomenon of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy, loosely explained, is the tendency for things to become disorganized. Hot coffee
Andras Vladar in a white gown, hairnet and mask with a scanning electron microscope.

How Can NIST Help: Collaborating at a Distance to Defeat COVID-19

June 9, 2020
Heather Evans
I’ve been working from home since March 13. But even though I’ve been remote, I am still really connected to my colleagues — and have even created some new relationships. How’d that happen? First off, my office — the Program Coordination Office at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
Tytus Mak sitting at his desk and while colleague Arun Moorthy and he look at a computer screen

Shaping the Future of the NIST Mass Spectral Library

June 9, 2020
Tytus Mak
When one thinks of mass spectral libraries — well, let’s be honest here, the very idea of mass spectral libraries will never cross most people’s minds, even most scientists’. But that’s true for most of the seemingly esoteric things that many of us at the National Institute of Standards and
A cartoon robot holding up a pair of cups representing energy wells. An dot with an "e-" on it representing an electron is in the left cup. In the background is a black and white closeup of a electronic chip. Above the cups there are blue colored electric leads.

Ebb and Flow: Creating Quantum Dots Automatically With AI

May 27, 2020
Justyna Zwolak
Even though research on artificial intelligence (AI) goes back to the 1960s , it wasn't until the past decade that AI really became an integral part of our lives. From automatically recognizing faces in our photo library to predicting traffic congestion and finding the fastest routes to our