Engineers need to know how rocket surfaces will interact with radiation to be able to design and control components. MSL can make reflectance measurements to inform their modelling. The brightness of displays in aircraft cockpits needs to be at the right level for safe operation. MSL calibrates luminance meters so that displays can be monitored and safety can be assured. The integrity of aircraft parts, such as propeller blades, are monitored using non-destructive testing.
Capturing the light from the most distant galaxies requires specialist telescopes built with incredibly precise optics. It is important that the lenses used in these telescopes have high transmittance to create good images. MSL measures the transmittance of light at specific wavelengths through the final coated lenses.
Meat inspectors need to be able to quickly and easily identify spoiled products to prevent them from being sold to New Zealanders. This requires adequate lighting, which can be assured using calibrated light meters traceable to MSL.
Germicidal lamps are used in food production to ensure packaging and containers, such as food cans, are sterilised prior to filling. High-powered and pulsed lighting is used in many devices for quality checking or for product development. Displays at museums such as Te Papa need to get the lighting just right: enough light so that visitors can see items clearly, but not so much that valuable artefacts are exposed to radiation damage. MSL assists with measurements of both the level of lighting and the identification of harmful blue or ultraviolet components in lighting.
In an emergency, lighting is designed to turn on to guide people to the emergency exits on ships. MSL does testing of the photoluminescence of emergency lighting to ensure that in the event of an emergency the lights turn on and people can follow them to get to the emergency exit safely. Every time transactions are made using internet banking, they are encrypted so that people cannot steal information.
In the future, quantum systems will be used for this. MSL is preparing for this future by investigating the detection of single photons. When computer generated creatures and special effects are added into films, the producers want them to look realistic. Doing this requires knowledge of how the surfaces behave in different lighting conditions.
MSL makes measurements of reflectance for different surfaces, which are used to make these effects look more realistic. To check that kiwifruit are ready to be harvested, kiwifruit orchards can cut open a kiwifruit and measure the colour of its flesh. Instruments that measure colour are routinely checked for accuracy using coloured tiles. The colours of the tiles are calibrated by MSL to ensure that good decisions are made, the kiwifruit is harvested at the right time, and fruit arrives on shelves in the best possible condition.
Visual attributes, such as colour, gloss, texture, or sparkle, combine to give a surface its unique appearance. In products like cosmetics or automotive paint, appearance can have a significant impact on consumer choice. MSL is working with international colleagues to develop a common language for the measurement of light scattering. These tools will provide industry with a more reliable way to define and control the properties of a surface.
The aviation industry is heavily regulated to ensure the safety of air travel. These devices are used to test the performance of a wide range of sensors inside aeroplanes as well as to monitor and control the heat-treatment of some aircraft parts. Clinical thermometers are important medical diagnostic tools. MSL calibrates reference equipment used by hospitals to calibrate their clinical thermometers.
MSL also provides advice on how to improve the design and performance of consumables in the health sector, such as ventilators. To prevent bacterial contamination, health and safety regulations require tight control of the temperatures at which certain foods can be stored.
MSL provides advice to supermarkets on how to control and measure temperature and humidity in large fridges and freezers and on how these control measures can be optimised. Whether transported by road, air, or sea, the temperature and humidity in certain shipments, such as perishable foodstuffs, need to be carefully controlled to deliver good quality on arrival. MSL calibrates data-loggers which are shipped with the products to guarantee that the requirements are met.
To ensure the health and wellbeing of employees in workplaces, temperature and humidity levels should be kept within a comfortable range. MSL supports air conditioning calibration services by providing traceability to national measurement standards. MSL engages in research collaborations with Crown Research Institutes and provides advice on best-practice in temperature and humidity measurements. Second-tier calibration laboratories carry out tens of thousands of temperature and humidity calibrations each year, mainly for industry.
MSL supports these laboratories by calibrating their reference equipment, by providing advice and training on measurement techniques, and by assessing the technical competence of laboratory staff.
Many factories require tight control over the temperature and humidity at which manufacturing processes occur. MSL provides calibrations and advice on best measurement practice to support these industries and offers solutions to difficult measurement problems. MSL provides advice on remote calibration of temperature and dew-point sensors. This helps, for example, to detect the onset of frost, so that vineyard owners can take action to avoid damage to their grapes. National heritage items, at museums such as Te Papa, need to be kept within well-defined temperature and humidity ranges to preserve and extend the life of precious artefacts.
MSL provides advice on how these conditions can be met. Important historical documents, such as the Treaty of Waitangi, should be kept within well-defined temperature and humidity ranges to protect and preserve them.
Data warehouses play the roles of cloudy storage, data transfer as well as sharing and encryption. One elementary requirement is the high reliability of uninterrupted power supply to maintain all hardware modules in working order at all time. It makes the dual power sources and UPS essential infrastructure. Electrical standards guarantee those accuracies and compatibilities. Manufactured products require testing to ensure they provide what the customer expects and as well are safe to use.
Many products will require electrical testing to ensure that they meet both these requirements. A particularly important example is the manufacture of high voltage cable used to distribute electricity around New Zealand. The manufacturer in this case makes a range of precision electrical measurements to ensure their product will operate reliably for many years.
Many medical treatments involve precise doses of ionising radiation which are monitored by radiation dosimeters that measure the radiation dose as a tiny electrical current. MSL is able to calibrate the current-measuring capability of these dosimeters to ensure patients receive precisely the correct amount of radiation prescribed. Understanding weight. Is that object too heavy to pick up by yourself or do you need to use something to lift it? Some may think this is not important but it is pretty easy to hurt yourself if you lift objects that are too heavy.
Proper use of capacity. Just how many clothes can you fit in a dresser or closet without it becoming too crammed? Without a clear concept of capacity you might find yourself pouring an entire half gallon of orange juice into a small glass! Telling time. The ability to tell time is all based on measurement principles.
Whether you are using a digital clock or an hourglass these devices measure the passage of time. Now, imagine how chaotic the world would be if if was impossible to measure the passage of time. How much weight is too much for a plane to take off or a car to move efficiently? How much fuel is needed to reach a certain point and how long will it take to get somewhere? Yes, measurements play a significant part in transportation. Obviously, in either case, disastrous results would be likely to follow.
Though neither nurses or pilots are considered scientists, both use science in their professions, and those disastrous results serve to highlight the crucial matter of using standardized measurements in science. Standardized measurements are necessary to a chemist or any scientist because, in order for an experiment to be useful, it must be possible to duplicate the experiment. If the chemist does not know exactly how much of a certain element he or she mixed with another to form a given compound, the results of the experiment are useless.
In order to share information and communicate the results of experiments, then, scientists need a standardized "vocabulary" of measures. By international agreement, the worldwide scientific community adopted what came to be known as SI at the 9th General Conference on Weights and Measures in The system was refined at the 11th General Conference in , and given its present name; but in fact most components of SI belong to a much older system of weights and measures developed in France during the late eighteenth century.
The United States, as almost everyone knows, is the wealthiest and most powerful nation on Earth. On the other hand, Brunei—a tiny nation-state on the island of Java in the Indonesian archipelago—enjoys considerable oil wealth, but is hardly what anyone would describe as a super-power. Yemen, though it is located on the Arabian peninsula, does not even possess significant oil wealth, and is a poor, economically developing nation. Finally, Burma in Southeast Asia can hardly be described even as a "developing" nation: ruled by an extremely repressive military regime, it is one of the poorest nations in the world.
So what do these four have in common? They are the only nations on the planet that have failed to adopt the metric system of weights and measures. The system used in the United States is called the English system, though it should more properly be called the American system, since England itself has joined the rest of the world in "going metric. Like methods of counting described above, most systems of measurement in premodern times were modeled on parts of the human body.
The foot is an obvious example of this, while the inch originated from the measure of a king's first thumb joint. At one point, the yard was defined as the distance from the nose of England's King Henry I to the tip of his outstretched middle finger. Obviously, these are capricious, downright absurd standards on which to base a system of measure. They involve things that change, depending for instance on whose foot is being used as a standard. Yet the English system developed in this willy-nilly fashion over the centuries; today, there are literally hundreds of units—including three types of miles, four kinds of ounces, and five kinds of tons, each with a different value.
What makes the English system particularly cumbersome, however, is its lack of convenient conversion factors. For length, there are 12 inches in a foot, but 3 feet in a yard, and 1, yards in a mile. Where volume is concerned, there are 16 ounces in a pound assuming one is talking about an avoirdupois ounce , but 2, pounds in a ton.
And, to further complicate matters, there are all sorts of other units of measure developed to address a particular property: horsepower, for instance, or the British thermal unit Btu. Great Britain, though it has long since adopted the metric system, in established the British Imperial System, aspects of which are reflected in the system still used in America.
This is ironic, given the desire of early Americans to distance themselves psychologically from the empire to which their nation had once belonged. In any case, England's great worldwide influence during the nineteenth century brought about widespread adoption of the English or British system in colonies such as Australia and Canada.
This acceptance had everything to do with British power and tradition, and nothing to do with convenience. A much more usable standard had actually been embraced 25 years before in a land that was then among England's greatest enemies: France. During the period leading up to and following the French Revolution of , French intellectuals believed that every aspect of existence could and should be treated in highly rational, scientific terms.
Out of these ideas arose much folly, particularly during the Reign of Terror in , but one of the more positive outcomes was the metric system. This system is decimal—that is, based entirely on the number 10 and powers of 10, making it easy to relate one figure to another. For instance, there are centimeters in a meter and 1, meters in a kilometer. For designating smaller values of a given measure, the metric system uses principles much simpler than those of the English system, with its irregular divisions of for instance gallons, quarts, pints, and cups.
In the metric system, one need only use a simple Greek or Latin prefix to designate that the value is multiplied by a given power of In general, the prefixes for values greater than 1 are Greek, while Latin is used for those less than 1. These prefixes, along with their abbreviations and respective values, are as follows. The use of these prefixes can be illustrated by reference to the basic metric unit of length, the meter.
For long distances, a kilometer 1, m is used; on the other hand, very short distances may require a centimeter 0. Measurements of length also provide a good example of why SI includes units that are not part of the metric system, though they are convertible to metric units.
Hard as it may be to believe, scientists often measure lengths even smaller than a nanometer—the width of an atom, for instance, or the wavelength of a light ray. The SI uses seven basic units, representing length, mass, time, temperature, amount of substance, electric current, and luminous intensity.
The first four parameters are a part of everyday life, whereas the last three are of importance only to scientists.
This is measured by the mole, a unit discussed in the essay on Mass, Density, and Volume. Luminous intensity, or the brightness of a light source, is measured in candelas, while the SI unit of electric current is the ampere. The other four basic units are the meter for length, the kilogram for mass, the second for time, and the degree Celsius for temperature.
The last of these is discussed in the essay on Temperature; as for meters, kilograms, and seconds, they will be examined below in terms of the means used to define each. Calibration is the process of checking and correcting the performance of a measuring instrument or device against the accepted standard.
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