May
20, 2019
-
REDEFINITION
of the KILOGRAM as a CONSTANT MATHEMATICAL
EQUATION
For more than a century the world's fundamental unit
of mass has been based on a single, cylindrical piece of
metal. And authorized copies of it stored in secured
chambers around the world including the United States,
over the years in infinitesimal ways, are shedding or
accumulating atoms here and there, thus throwing off the
accuracy of the objects meant to be the world standard
for measurements of mass.
The 4 cm tall ingot of platinum and iridium, known as
the International Prototype Kilogram, offered the world
a standardized way of measuring what earlier scientists
defined as 1 kilogram being the mass of 1 liter
of distilled water (at sea level).
But to ensure greater accuracy there is a method of nano-measurement
using "Watt Balance" housed at the U.S.
National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST)
near Washington, DC, which is a bid to recast the
kilogram as a mathematical equation, unerring, immutable
and ultimately easy for experts to reproduce.
And it is
expected to yield groundbreaking calculations.
The ultimate purpose of the "Watt Balance" is
to help scientists generate a reliable calculation of
Planck's Constant. A universal value that quantifies the
relationship between energy, light and an object's mass,
which in turn will produce a new,
more accurate basis
for defining the kilogram worldwide.
The race to reinvent the unit of measurement
was considered important, partly because the kilogram is
the only holdout in the metric system still based on a
physical object rather than a formula derived from a
universal constant.
The meter, once pegged to the length of a bar of platinum, was
redefined in 1983 by a formula using the speed of light
as the distance light travels in a vacuum over
1/299,792,458 of a second. Which means that the length
of a meter will never change.
The
kilogram however is redefined as "JUST A BUNDLE OF ENERGY"
While the ampere, kelvin and mole will be tied to the elementary
electrical charge, the Boltzmann constant and the Avogadro
constant, respectively, the kilogram will now be defined by the
Planck Constant.
A physical constant
that is the quantum of action, which relates the energy in one
quantum (photon) of
electromagnetic radiation to the frequency of that
radiation.
A photon's
energy is equal to the Planck constant times its frequency.
Which is to say, Planck's constant,
symbolized h, relates the energy in one quantum (photon) of
electromagnetic radiation to the frequency of that radiation. In
the International System of units (SI), the constant is
equal to
approximately 6.626176 x 10-34 joule-seconds.
The equation reveals that mass can
be understood and even quantified in terms of energy.
Planck's equation shows that energy, in turn, can be calculated in
terms of the frequency ν of some entity such as a
photon (a particle of light), or alternatively, with some
mathematical substitutions, a mass- times a multiple of h.
The multiple must be a positive integer- such as 1, 2 or 3.
The integer aspect is what makes the relationship "quantized"
matter releases energy in discrete chunks, known as
quanta,
which can be imagined as individual packets or bundles of energy.
Thus, the ultimate purpose of the
"Watt Balance" is
to help scientists generate a reliable calculation of
Planck's Constant. A universal value that quantifies the
relationship between energy, light and an object's mass,
which in turn will produce a new, more accurate basis
for defining the kilogram worldwide.
Just as the meter, once defined as the length of a bar of platinum, was
redefined in 1983 by a formula using the speed of light
as the distance light travels in a vacuum over
1/299,792,458 of a second. Which means that the length
of a meter, like the kilogram now will never change.
HIGGS Boson
In
July of 2012, scientists at the world's biggest atom
smasher in Switzerland claimed the discovery of a new
subatomic particle.
They called it "consistent" with the
long-sought Higgs Boson, popularly known as the
"God particle" that helps explain what gives
all matter in the universe size and shape. It
also adds to the "Big Bang" theory in creation
of the universe.
The Higgs
Boson, which until now has been a theoretical particle,
is seen as the key to understanding why matter has mass,
which combines with gravity to give an object weight.
Very similar to the idea of gravity as Isaac Newton
discovered it to be where gravity was there all the time
before Newton explained it. |
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