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Taking Measure Blog Posts

Physics

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Displaying 126 - 150 of 150

The Magnetic Allure of Superconductivity

March 31, 2017

Nick Butch

One of my favorite things about being a condensed matter physicist is how broadly defined the subject is. There are lots of interesting phenomena begging for scientific attention, so it’s never boring. One of my favorite topics lies at the crossroads of magnetism and superconductivity. Magnets have

Map of dark matter (in pink) in the universe

Pushing the Quantum Limit in the Search for Dark Matter

March 16, 2017

Konrad Lehnert

Here’s a surprising fact: We don’t know what makes up 80 percent of the matter in the universe. I don’t mean that the matter is made of atoms, and we just don’t know which kind of atoms. What I mean is that four-fifths of the universe appear to be made of something that isn’t atoms at all, or more

Steel casement containing Curie's last radium standard

Saving Marie Curie’s Last Radium Standard

February 22, 2017

Bert Coursey

Marie Curie is perhaps the most famous woman of 20th-century science. Major motion pictures and best-selling biographies have chronicled her discovery of the radioactive elements polonium and radium, for which she shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1903 and then received a second Nobel Prize, this

Platinum/palladium print portrait of William Willis, Jr. (1841-1923)

Taking a Closer Look at Old Photos

February 16, 2017

Keana Scott

My mom is a painter, so I grew up in a messy house full of brushes, twisted tubes of paint, pots of ink, plaster busts of various Romans, rolls of papers, and shelves of art books. I remember spending many hours poring over the glossy pages of my mom’s art books and trying to imitate the drawings I

Roundish shape clear ball containing multiple round-ish shapes with red or orange centers

Taking a Seat at the Periodic Table

February 7, 2017

Michael E. Newman

In case you haven’t already heard, if you wanted to give your loved one that special, once-in-a-lifetime gift by naming one of the elements in row 7 of the Periodic Table after him or her, it’s too late (and probably against the rules anyway, but more on that later). With the recently announced

Photo of man in white space suite on surface of moon at night.

Mooning Over Measurement

January 31, 2017

Ann Chiaramonti Debay

I’ve worked with many valuable materials in my career. Precious metals like gold and platinum, rare engineered nanomaterials, and fragile gemstones nearly as old as the Earth itself. But the unassuming jars of fine gray-brown powder I found myself holding last year left them all in the dust, so to

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

Diagram with blue background and man standing behind rope line

Ideas Whose Time Has Come (and Gone), v. 2017

December 20, 2016

Robin Materese

A catchphrase from a popular reality show goes: “One day you're in. And the next day, you're out.” For the purposes of the show, the host is referencing fashion. But the same could be said about science. With each new discovery or advance, an old theory or idea often becomes obsolete … or at least

Hugh Dryden Had a Plan to Get a Man out of a Can

November 21, 2016

Keith Martin

November is National Aviation History Month. So it’s fitting that it was also in November, of 1910, that a 12-year-old boy in Baltimore, Maryland, named Hugh Dryden saw an airplane for the first time. The owners of the Baltimore Sun newspaper, for promotional purposes, had paid adventurer Hubert

A Little Light Construction: Laser Welding in Three Acts

November 7, 2016

Brian Simonds

Welding is said to be more art than science. In part, this is a nod to the vital, skilled work that welders perform. It’s also recognition of the fact that the physics of the process is really, really difficult to understand. I joined a NIST project on laser welding about two years ago. Before this

Woman and man talking beside wall with several square illustrations of science art

Finding Art in Science

October 24, 2016

Kelly Irvine

I’m a graphic designer, or, in the language of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, a "Visual Information Specialist." For the past 18 years I’ve been working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a federal laboratory where some of the best and brightest scientists

Photo of purplish black sky with a streak of bright lightning

In Pursuit of Plasma Power: Hot Stuff, Snowstorms, and Starry Skies

September 15, 2016

Yuri Ralchenko

Do we really need hot stuff? I’m not talking about Donna Summer’s disco hit of 1979 or global warming. I’m not talking about anything so lukewarm as the surface of our sun—a mere 6,000 kelvins. I don’t even mean something as hot as 1,000,000 kelvins. No, the kind of hot stuff I’m talking about is

Connected gray boxes with x's at each intersection of red and yellow and yellow arrow across the design

Revolution by Design: The Materials Genome Initiative

August 17, 2016

Jim Warren

The creation of a new material has long been either an accident or a matter of trial and error. Steel, for instance, was developed over hundreds of years by people who didn’t know why what they were doing worked (or didn’t work). Generations of blacksmiths observed that iron forged in charcoal was

The NIST Summer Institute for Middle School Science Teachers: An Educator's Journey

August 9, 2016

Laura Karns

I was always fascinated with science. However, I steered away from pursuing science beyond high school because there was too much math involved (and “MATH,” a four-letter word if ever I saw one, and I never really got along). As a result, much of my teaching experience has centered around things

three weapons on a blue checked background

Women’s Body Armor: Staying Ahead of the Curves

August 1, 2016

Jennifer Huergo

As I peer into the cardboard box NIST researcher Amanda Forster holds out for me, I can’t help thinking that this mild-mannered materials scientist has an impressive collection of shivs. The handmade prison weapons include a ballpoint pen with a razor embedded in the shaft and a toothbrush

Know Nukes: Reference Materials for Nuclear Forensics

July 25, 2016

Jacqueline Mann

Legwarmers, preppies, yuppies, Molly Ringwald, nuclear paranoia … the 1980s were my favorite decade. I was in junior high school in New Jersey when I saw The Day After, a 1983 TV movie that depicted a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. The focus of the movie, however, was

If I Had a Hammer … I’d Do Impact Testing

July 8, 2016

Steven Mates

Right now, scientists all over the world are trying to understand how we get injured when our bodies are subjected to strong, dynamic loads – a hard body-check on the hockey rink, a tackle on the football field, a car crash, or even a bomb blast. Fortunately, I haven’t had any experience with bomb

Science, Science Fiction, and Superheroes

June 2, 2016

James K. Olthoff

I’m a physicist, and as anyone who watches the popular TV series “ The Big Bang Theory” knows, it’s a commonly held conception that there is a strong connection between being a scientist and being enthralled with all things science fiction, fantasy, and superheroes. Anyone who walks into my office

World Metrology Day: Kilogram in the Balance

May 20, 2016

Jon Pratt

It was Monday, April 25, 2016, and I was going to meet mass experts Pat Abbott and Eddie Mulhern of NIST’s Mass and Force group as part of my frantic preparations for a 5:21 p.m. flight to Paris. Pat and Eddie were the appointed custodians of the four 1 kilogram masses that I was to transport to the

John Cahn standing by blackboard smiling

My Memories of John Cahn

April 28, 2016

Dan Shechtman

This article was written in response to the March 14, 2016, death of John Cahn , one of the world’s foremost materials scientists, who worked at NIST from 1977 to 2006. Cahn received the National Medal of Science in 1998 and the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology in 2011 . I first met John Cahn in

solar panels reflecting the clouds and blue sky

Directing My Energy Toward a Sustainable Future

April 22, 2016

Ted Heilweil

Have you ever wondered what might happen if we run out of fossil fuels? How do you think we will be able to survive without the resources we need to heat and cool our homes and buildings or the raw materials we use to create all the plastics that make up our modern world? Indeed, if we continue to

A Slice of Math Functions for Pi Day

March 14, 2016

Sandy Ressler

Happy Pi Day! No, not pie day, Pi Day. That Greek character pi, π, that you’ve heard of but aren’t quite sure what the big deal is. Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. As yawn-inducing as that may sound, it’s an important ratio because pi is the same no matter the size of

Hubbard/Meggers Periodic Chart of the Atoms

The Periodic Table: It’s Elementary!

February 12, 2016

C.W. Clark

Of all the many useful and interesting periodic tables on the Internet—the periodic tables of the animals, vegetables, and minerals—and U.S. Presidents, Vienna® Chicago-style hot dog condiments, SQL server dynamic management objects, and paleo food—the original Periodic Table of the Elements remains

Photo of scientists checking vaccine temperatures.

Sticking Point: Temperature Control Vital to Vaccine Viability

January 21, 2016

Michal Chojnacky

Flu season typically peaks between December and February, but by the time the winter holidays roll around, many of us will have already waited in line at area clinics, grocery stores, and pharmacies to get our annual flu shot. The Centers for Disease Control reports that U.S. vaccination efforts

Howard Yoon with the NIST standard of spectral irradiance, a bright light, well-calibrated light bulb..

Lighting the Way Toward Better Measurements

January 15, 2016

Howard Yoon

As a physicist who explores ways to measure light more accurately, it should come as no surprise that I’m fascinated by even common optical phenomena that we see all around us. For instance, rainbows occur because light travels through water and air at different speeds and because different colors

Physics

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