[time-nuts] One Kg Quartz Resonator

Bob Camp lists at rtty.us
Tue Jan 22 12:15:27 EST 2013


Hi

 

There's a paper in the February IEEE UFFC transactions proposing that the SI
standard of mass be replaced with a 1 KG quartz resonator. It's by Vig and
Howe, so a copy should be freely available soon. It currently shows up as
"submitted" on the NIST site. 

 

The short version: 

 

The SI mass standard is a 100+ year old lump of metal in Paris. Coming up
with something that can be related to a time or frequency measurement could
vastly improve the ability to measure any changes in the lump. With adequate
care, you might be able to make a great big quartz resonator that would do
the trick. There's lots of "if you could do it, it would be a big step
forward" stuff in the paper. The solutions to a lot of the design challenges
either are not yet fully worked out, or are being saved for the next paper. 

 

Anybody out there with a pre-WWII GR 100KHz bar standard might find a whole
new customer base.

 

Bob

 

 



More information about the time-nuts mailing list