The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) is planning to review four units of measure, including the crucial kilogram, at a meeting that's currently ongoing from October 16 to 20.

If scientists had sacred objects, this would be one of them: a single, closely guarded 137-year-old cylinder of metal, housed in a vault outside of Paris. It is a prototype that precisely defines a ...

Physics is a funny thing. Despite dictating the behaviors and states of everything from atoms to stars, our interpretation of its effects are rooted in very human constructs. Meters, amperes and ...

How much is a kilogram? 1,000 grams. 2.20462 pounds. Or 0.0685 slugs based on the old Imperial gravitational system. But where does this amount actually come from and how can everyone be sure they are ...

If several scientists get their way, a 2.2-pound hunk of metal -- the international prototype of the kilogram -- may soon be out of style. Like its six basic-units-of-measurement siblings before it -- ...

Last week, my esteemed colleague Jim Meskauskas published the second of a two-part treatise on destroying the impression as the basic unit of purchase in ClickZ. While the article was interesting, we ...

In no field of science is the gulf between appreciation and importance as wide as it is for metrology. It’s not about the weather. Metrology is the science of measuring. It has a longer history than ...