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$an opalescent close up of Roman glass. There is a clear semi-circular fracture in the center of the piece.$

Ancient Roman Glass, Perceiving Color in LED, 3D Mapping for Public Safety, SRMs in Space: A Sample of Stories From the Social Sphere

May 21, 2020

Photos of culinary masterpieces, opinions on world events, memories from the good times … we share a lot on social media to feel connected and together. Coordinating the social media presence for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) means that I get to share enthusiasm. That’s

black background with many multicolored symbols representing a clipboard, a computer screen, test tubes, gears and a petri dish. On the computer screen it reads "World Metrology Day 2020"

World Metrology Day: Measurements for Medicine

May 19, 2020

Walter Copan

Today is World Metrology Day. Have you put up the decorations and baked a cake yet to celebrate?! You should! Metrology, the science of measurement, makes modern life possible. Measurement science provides the common language that enables manufacturing quality, equitable global trade and the

A Life in Public Service: A Q&A With NIST's Donna Dodson

May 6, 2020

After 33 years in public service, NIST Fellow Donna Dodson retired from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on May 8, 2020. Over her career, she has played a critical leadership role in a number of areas related to cybersecurity, including artificial intelligence, the internet

Charlie Tarrio peers into a large chamber illuminated by purple light.

How Extreme Ultraviolet Light Helps Give Us Smarter Smartphones and Stronger Satellites

April 13, 2020

Charles Tarrio, Thomas Lucatorto

In 2019, after decades of effort, manufacturers used a new technology to create smartphones with individual circuit features as small as 7 nanometers (nm), or billionths of a meter, enabling them to cram 8.5 billion electronic devices known as transistors on a single small chip. Fitting more

A large gathering of women on a staircase

The Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics: Leveling the Playing Field

March 27, 2020

Amber McCreary

Inclusivity is a core value at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and we strive to make it a welcoming place for all. At the start of 2020, NIST and the University of Maryland (UMD) co-hosted the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP), which brought dozens of

man in a lab adjusting a small metallic ball with a mirror in it attached by a magnet to a large swinging metal arm

Journeying From Laboratory Research to Documentary Standards

March 18, 2020

Bala Muralikrishnan

“Wow, that’s cool, but the meter was defined a long time ago, so what is really there for you to do?” This is the response I get from people when I tell them that I work in the length group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). My reply is as short as I can make it — “I spend

Hae-Jeong Lee speaks into a microphone as a student stands beside her

Women in STEM: Igniting Young Minds, Illuminating the Future

March 16, 2020

Hae-Jeong Lee

I am a research chemist and lab officer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). From November 2019 to February 2020, I worked as an Embassy Science Fellow in the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea. The U.S. Department of State’s Office of Science and Technology Cooperation

white pi symbol on a grey field made up of the numbers of pi

The Life of (Buckingham) Pi

March 12, 2020

C.W. Clark

What do the following topics have in common? Pricing models for parking reservation systems. The mechanics of human walking. The die-down of water waves in sea ice. The self-hovering of unmanned aerial vehicles right above the ground. Bright cosmic infrared arcs that form when stellar dust meets the

man with goggles, blue shirt and blue cap adjusts a pipe on top of a gleaming aluminum ultra-high vacuum (UHV) metal deposition chamber

Seeking the Power of Quantum Computing in Silicon

February 14, 2020

Josh Pomeroy

Despite the vast computing speed and power available to us in our palms, our desktops and massive server farms, classical computing is reaching its limits, leaving a surprising number of conceptually simple problems essentially intractable. In general, these tend to be problems that ask, “What is

Heather Chen-Mayer loading a jade artifact into a neutron detector

How Neutrons and Gamma Rays Can Reveal Our Cultural Heritage

December 9, 2019

H. Heather Chen-Mayer

Most people think that understanding and preserving our cultural heritage is mainly the concern of the social sciences and humanities, such as archaeology and art history. But physical sciences, including physics and chemistry, often play a large role as well. Determining the elemental composition

Text reads "2019 top 7 visuals." Text is surrounded by pictures that appear in the article.

Top 7 NIST Visuals of 2019

November 25, 2019

Mark Esser

Science, while important, is often thought of as, well, kind of dry in the ocular department. The visuals commonly associated with scientific endeavors are charts and graphs, which are great if you're a scientist, but for the rest of us, they're as inscrutable as a professional poker player's face

graphic showing the number six with a radar dish, a quantum logic clock, arrows representing magnetic spins, a magnifying glass, a baggie of white powder, and a group of cubes in a hexagonal shape

Unboxing a New Spin-Triplet Superconductor

November 14, 2019

Sheng Ran

Nature often reveals itself in surprising ways, so scientists, who study nature, have a lot of opportunities to be surprised. Over the past year and a half, I have been working on UTe 2, a simple compound made of two parts, uranium and tellurium, which I discovered is a superconductor. That is, it

a photo of two bottles about the size of spice bottles. On one is written 4351 Human lung for 239+240 Pu measurements, and on the other is written 4352 Human liver for 239+240 Pu measurements

Making Radioactive Lung and Liver Samples for Better Human Health

October 25, 2019

Kenneth G.W. Inn

It was 1978, and the United States was embroiled in a Cold War. Nuclear weapons were being produced and numerous countries were carrying out atmospheric nuclear tests. Nuclear power plants were also being built and fueled. As an unintended result, people were sometimes contaminated and injured when

a glass brick wall with blue, orange, yell, black, turquoise, and red bricks in a pattern representing different isotopes

The Curiously Colorful Wall of NIST's Radiation Physics Building

May 23, 2019

Mark Tyra, Keith Martin

In what is currently a large construction zone in the center of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus, the Radiation Physics building is undergoing an expansion and much-needed modernization. Unlike the Mid-Century Modern architecture that marks many of

a stylized rendering of the periodic table

The Periodic Table: It's More than Just Chemistry and Physics

May 23, 2019

Ben P. Stein

This is the International Year of the Periodic Table, and while I’ve been (accurately) accused of being a physics fanboy, I’m here to tell you that this famous chart isn’t just about physics, chemistry and the other sciences. It’s also about mathematics and engineering and even nonscientific areas

group of five men holding champagne flutes

The 'Gang of Five' and the SI Revolution

May 16, 2019

Peter Mohr

Although I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, I was never a gang member there. My gang membership came much later and in an entirely unexpected way. No, more accurately, I was a nerd who was interested in taking things apart to figure out how they worked, playing with a crystal radio, making an electric

from left to right, a a metal cylinder, a telescope, and a device with rubber bushings on a spindle

Unidentified Museum Objects V

May 9, 2019

Jason Stoughton

In celebration of National Inventors Month 2019 (yes, it’s a thing) we’re highlighting some curious inventions currently cooling their heels in the NIST museum’s basement storage area. These innovations, created some decades ago, have been safely preserved and protected by the stalwart staff of the

Woman standing in a lab holds a rectangular radiation detector near a metal globe that has been painted with a radiation symbol

Defending Against Nuclear and Radioactive Threats: A Q&A with NIST's Leticia Pibida

May 8, 2019

Leticia Pibida

Leticia Pibida, a physicist in the Radiation Physics Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has been chosen as a finalist for a Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal, an award for federal employees given by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. The honor

A gas field with gas leak detection systems arrayed in circles with the path of appearing as spokes. Several billowing gas leak clouds can be seen.

The Long Road from Nobelists' Invention to LongPath Technologies

May 1, 2019

Greg Rieker

On October 23, 2015, workers discovered a massive natural-gas leak at California’s Aliso Canyon storage facility in Los Angeles County. Over the course of the next several months, the storage facility leaked approximately 100,000 tons of odorized natural gas into nearby neighborhoods, sickening and

cartoon illustration that explains how communicating science is a key part of NIST Center for Neutron Research Director Rob Dimeo's job

My Visual Crutch for Communicating Science

April 16, 2019

Rob Dimeo

George Orji using a pair of tweezers to make an adjustment to an instrument.

What To Do When Measurement Methods Produce Different Answers

April 1, 2019

George Orji

What are you looking to measure? This is one of the central questions for a metrologist (a measurement scientist) and is usually answered before measurements can proceed. It is impossible to make sense of the results without knowing the measurand—the actual physical dimension or other property of

Mary Kombolias load a small blue piece of paper into a dielectric spectrometer.

Chasing Paper: Adventures in Fiber Analysis

March 7, 2019

Mary Kombolias

Growing up in New Orleans, Louisiana, I had no scientific aspirations as a child. I do remember being entertained by science, relishing public television programs such as Newton’s Apple, Bill Nye the Science Guy and Square One, but I never saw science as a career path. It was not for lack of

The Case for Building Beautiful Instruments

March 4, 2019

Stephan Schlamminger

I discovered my affinity for attractive instruments while working a job previous to my coming to NIST. My boss then had a love affair with the common hose clamp—the one with the worm gear. Whenever we had to fasten a component to an apparatus he said, “why don’t you use a hose clamp?” With every

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