The image you are looking at here is a rendering of what the “official kilogram” looks like. The 1KG weight its self is stored in France and is the source to which everybody calibrates their weight system by.
Theres a snag though as the weight is 130 years old and folk in the US believe that it might not be accurate anymore. This will now start a project to look in to this and make sure that 1KG is 1KG. How they measure that and how they knew it was 1KG in the first place sounds a little too complicated for me to figure out.
A quick scan on Wikipedia speaks about comparing the weight to an exact amount of water with 1 gram being equal to 1CM3 at the temperature of melting ice. Lets just hope the rulers don’t need to re calibrated too to measure that 1 cubic CM and that the water is water and not slightly salted to change the melting temperature. I have a feeling this meeting to get the 1KG weight just right could get complicated!
Via: Gizmag
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.