National Institute of Standards and Technology
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is a measurement standards laboratory, and a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce. Its mission is to promote innovation and industrial competitiveness, in 1821, John Quincy Adams had declared Weights and measures may be ranked among the necessities of life to every individual of human society. From 1830 until 1901, the role of overseeing weights and measures was carried out by the Office of Standard Weights and Measures, president Theodore Roosevelt appointed Samuel W. Stratton as the first director. The budget for the first year of operation was $40,000, a laboratory site was constructed in Washington, DC, and instruments were acquired from the national physical laboratories of Europe. In addition to weights and measures, the Bureau developed instruments for electrical units, in 1905 a meeting was called that would be the first National Conference on Weights and Measures. Quality standards were developed for products including some types of clothing, automobile brake systems and headlamps, during World War I, the Bureau worked on multiple problems related to war production, even operating its own facility to produce optical glass when European supplies were cut off.
Between the wars, Harry Diamond of the Bureau developed a blind approach radio aircraft landing system, in 1948, financed by the Air Force, the Bureau began design and construction of SEAC, the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer. The computer went into operation in May 1950 using a combination of vacuum tubes, about the same time the Standards Western Automatic Computer, was built at the Los Angeles office of the NBS and used for research there. A mobile version, DYSEAC, was built for the Signal Corps in 1954, due to a changing mission, the National Bureau of Standards became the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 1988. Following 9/11, NIST conducted the investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. NIST had a budget for fiscal year 2007 of about $843.3 million. NISTs 2009 budget was $992 million, and it received $610 million as part of the American Recovery, NIST employs about 2,900 scientists, engineers and support and administrative personnel. About 1,800 NIST associates complement the staff, in addition, NIST partners with 1,400 manufacturing specialists and staff at nearly 350 affiliated centers around the country.
NIST publishes the Handbook 44 that provides the Specifications, the Congress of 1866 made use of the metric system in commerce a legally protected activity through the passage of Metric Act of 1866. NIST is headquartered in Gaithersburg and operates a facility in Boulder, nISTs activities are organized into laboratory programs and extramural programs. Effective October 1,2010, NIST was realigned by reducing the number of NIST laboratory units from ten to six, nISTs Boulder laboratories are best known for NIST‑F1, which houses an atomic clock. NIST‑F1 serves as the source of the official time. NIST operates a neutron science user facility, the NIST Center for Neutron Research, the NCNR provides scientists access to a variety of neutron scattering instruments, which they use in many research fields
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired in the Middle Ages.
In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period.
Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date.
English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
Orders of magnitude (mass)
To help compare different orders of magnitude, the following lists describe various mass levels between 10−40 kg and 1053 kg. The table below is based on the kilogram, the unit of mass in the International System of Units. The kilogram is the standard unit to include an SI prefix as part of its name. The gram is an SI derived unit of mass, the names of all SI mass units are based on gram, rather than on kilogram, thus 103 kg is a megagram, not a kilokilogram. The tonne is a SI-compatible unit of equal to a megagram. The unit is in use for masses above about 103 kg and is often used with SI prefixes. Other units of mass are in use, historical units include the stone, the pound, the carat, and the grain. For subatomic particles, physicists use the equivalent to the energy represented by an electronvolt. At the atomic level, chemists use the mass of one-twelfth of a carbon-12 atom, astronomers use the mass of the sun. Unlike other physical quantities, mass-energy does not have an a priori expected minimal quantity, as is the case with time or length, plancks law allows for the existence of photons with arbitrarily low energies.
This series on orders of magnitude does not have a range of larger masses Mass units conversion calculator Mass units conversion calculator JavaScript
Metric system
The metric system is an internationally agreed decimal system of measurement. Many sources cite Liberia and Myanmar as the other countries not to have done so. Although the originators intended to devise a system that was accessible to all. Control of the units of measure was maintained by the French government until 1875, when it was passed to an intergovernmental organisation. From its beginning, the features of the metric system were the standard set of interrelated base units. These base units are used to larger and smaller units that could replace a huge number of other units of measure in existence. Although the system was first developed for use, the development of coherent units of measure made it particularly suitable for science. Although the metric system has changed and developed since its inception, designed for transnational use, it consisted of a basic set of units of measurement, now known as base units. At the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, most countries, the metric system was designed to be universal—in the words of the French philosopher Marquis de Condorcet it was to be for all people for all time.
However, these overtures failed and the custody of the metric system remained in the hands of the French government until 1875. In languages where the distinction is made, unit names are common nouns, the concept of using consistent classical names for the prefixes was first proposed in a report by the Commission on Weights and Measures in May 1793. The prefix kilo, for example, is used to multiply the unit by 1000, thus the kilogram and kilometre are a thousand grams and metres respectively, and a milligram and millimetre are one thousandth of a gram and metre respectively. These relations can be written symbolically as,1 mg =0, however,1935 extensions to the prefix system did not follow this convention, the prefixes nano- and micro-, for example have Greek roots. During the 19th century the prefix myria-, derived from the Greek word μύριοι, was used as a multiplier for 10000, prefixes are not usually used to indicate multiples of a second greater than 1, the non-SI units of minute and day are used instead.
On the other hand, prefixes are used for multiples of the unit of volume. The base units used in the system must be realisable. Each of the units in SI is accompanied by a mise en pratique published by the BIPM that describes in detail at least one way in which the base unit can be measured. In practice, such realisation is done under the auspices of a mutual acceptance arrangement, in the original version of the metric system the base units could be derived from a specified length and the weight of a specified volume of pure water
Canadian English
Canadian English is the set of varieties of the English language native to Canada. A larger number,28 million people, reported using English as their dominant language, 82% of Canadians outside the province of Quebec reported speaking English natively, but within Quebec the figure was just 7. 7% as most of its residents are native speakers of Quebec French. Canadian English contains elements of British English and American English, as well as many Canadianisms, the construction of identities and English-language varieties across political borders is a complex social phenomenon. The term Canadian English is first attested in a speech by the Reverend A. Constable Geikie in an address to the Canadian Institute in 1857, Canadian English is the product of five waves of immigration and settlement over a period of more than two centuries. Studies on earlier forms of English in Canada are rare, yet connections with other work to historical linguistics can be forged, an overview of diachronic work on Canadian English, or diachronically-relevant work, is Dollinger.
Until the 2000s, basically all commentators on the history of CanE have argued from the language-external history, an exception has been in the area of lexis, where Avis et als Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, offered real-time historical data though its quotations. Recently, historical linguists have started to study earlier Canadian English on historical linguistic data, dCHP-1 is now available in open access. )Most notably, Dollinger pioneered the historical corpus linguistic approach for English in Canada with CONTE and offers a developmental scenario for 18th and 19th century Ontario. Recently, with a 19th-century newspaper corpus from Ontario, has confirmed the scenario laid out in Dollinger, Canadian spelling of the English language combines British and American conventions. Words such as realize and paralyze are usually spelled with -ize or -yze rather than -ise or -yse, french-derived words that in American English end with -or and -er, such as color or center, often retain British spellings.
While the United States uses the Anglo-French spelling defense and offense, some nouns, as in British English, take -ice while matching verbs take -ise – for example and licence are nouns while practise and license are the respective corresponding verbs. Canadian spelling sometimes retains the British practice of doubling consonants when adding suffixes to words even when the syllable is not stressed. Compare Canadian travelled and marvellous to American traveled, counseling, in American English, such consonants are only doubled when stressed, for instance and enthralling are universal. In other cases and Americans differ from British spelling, such as in the case of nouns like curb and tire, Canadian spelling conventions can be partly explained by Canadas trade history. For instance, the British spelling of the word cheque probably relates to Canadas once-important ties to British financial institutions, Canadas political history has had an influence on Canadian spelling. Canadas first prime minister, John A.
Macdonald, once directed the Governor General of Canada to issue an order-in-council directing that government papers be written in the British style, a contemporary reference for formal Canadian spelling is the spelling used for Hansard transcripts of the Parliament of Canada. Many Canadian editors, use the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, often along with the chapter on spelling in Editing Canadian English, throughout part of the 20th century, some Canadian newspapers adopted American spellings, for example, color as opposed to the British-based colour. Some of the most substantial historical spelling data can be found in Dollinger, the use of such spellings was the long-standing practice of the Canadian Press perhaps since that news agencys inception, but visibly the norm prior to World War II. The practice of dropping the letter u in such words was considered a labour-saving technique during the days of printing in which movable type was set manually
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Membership of the IPCC is open to all members of the WMO and UNEP. The IPCC produces reports that support the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the ultimate objective of the UNFCCC is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The IPCC does not carry out its own research, nor does it do the work of monitoring climate or related phenomena itself. The IPCC bases its assessment on the literature, which includes peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed sources. Thousands of scientists and other experts contribute to writing and reviewing reports, IPCC reports contain a Summary for Policymakers, which is subject to line-by-line approval by delegates from all participating governments. Typically this involves the governments of more than 120 countries, the IPCC provides an internationally accepted authority on climate change, producing reports which have the agreement of leading climate scientists and the consensus of participating governments.
The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was shared, in equal parts, in this way, it was formed as a hybrid between a scientific body and an intergovernmental political organisation. The aims of the IPCC are to assess scientific information relevant to, Human-induced climate change, The impacts of human-induced climate change, korean economist Hoesung Lee has been the chair of the IPCC since October 8,2015, following the election of the new IPCC Bureau. Before this election, the IPCC was led by his vice-Chair Ismail El Gizouli, the previous chairs were Rajendra K. Pachauri, elected in May 2002, Robert Watson in 1997, and Bert Bolin in 1988. The chair is assisted by an elected bureau including vice-chairs, working group co-chairs, the IPCC Panel is composed of representatives appointed by governments and organizations. Participation of delegates with appropriate expertise is encouraged, plenary sessions of the IPCC and IPCC Working groups are held at the level of government representatives. Non Governmental and Intergovernmental Organizations may be allowed to attend as observers, Sessions of the IPCC Bureau, workshops and lead authors meetings are by invitation only.
Attendance at the 2003 meeting included 350 government officials and climate change experts, after the opening ceremonies, closed plenary sessions were held. The meeting report states there were 322 persons in attendance at Sessions with about seven-eighths of participants being from governmental organizations, there are several major groups, IPCC Panel, Meets in plenary session about once a year and controls the organizations structure and work program. The Panel is the IPCC corporate entity, Secretariat and manages all activities. 30 members include IPCC Vice-Chairs, Co-Chairs and Vice-Chairs of Working Groups, Working Groups, Each has two Co-Chairs, one from the developed and one from developing world, and a technical support unit. Working Group I, Assesses scientific aspects of the climate system, Co-Chairs, Valérie Masson-Delmotte and Panmao Zhai Working Group II, Assesses vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change and adaptation options. Co-Chairs, Hans-Otto Pörtner and Debra Roberts Working Group III, Assesses options for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, the organisation is required to comply with the Financial Regulations and Rules of the WMO
Cubic metre
The cubic metre or cubic meter is the SI derived unit of volume. It is the volume of a cube with one metre in length. An alternative name, which allowed a different usage with metric prefixes, was the stère, another alternative name, no longer widely used, was the kilolitre. A cubic metre of water at the temperature of maximum density and standard atmospheric pressure has a mass of 1000 kg. At 0 °C, the point of water, a cubic metre of water has slightly less mass,999.972 kilograms. It is sometimes abbreviated to cu m, m3, M3, m^3, m**3, CBM, abbreviated CBM and cbm in the freight business and MTQ in international trade. See Orders of magnitude for a comparison with other volumes
International System of Units
The International System of Units is the modern form of the metric system, and is the most widely used system of measurement. It comprises a coherent system of units of measurement built on seven base units, the system establishes a set of twenty prefixes to the unit names and unit symbols that may be used when specifying multiples and fractions of the units. The system was published in 1960 as the result of an initiative began in 1948. It is based on the system of units rather than any variant of the centimetre-gram-second system. The motivation for the development of the SI was the diversity of units that had sprung up within the CGS systems, the International System of Units has been adopted by most developed countries, the adoption has not been universal in all English-speaking countries. The metric system was first implemented during the French Revolution with just the metre and kilogram as standards of length, in the 1830s Carl Friedrich Gauss laid the foundations for a coherent system based on length and time.
In the 1860s a group working under the auspices of the British Association for the Advancement of Science formulated the requirement for a coherent system of units with base units and derived units. Meanwhile, in 1875, the Treaty of the Metre passed responsibility for verification of the kilogram, in 1921, the Treaty was extended to include all physical quantities including electrical units originally defined in 1893. The units associated with these quantities were the metre, second, kelvin, in 1971, a seventh base quantity, amount of substance represented by the mole, was added to the definition of SI. On 11 July 1792, the proposed the names metre, are and grave for the units of length, capacity. The committee proposed that multiples and submultiples of these units were to be denoted by decimal-based prefixes such as centi for a hundredth, on 10 December 1799, the law by which the metric system was to be definitively adopted in France was passed. Prior to this, the strength of the magnetic field had only been described in relative terms.
The technique used by Gauss was to equate the torque induced on a magnet of known mass by the earth’s magnetic field with the torque induced on an equivalent system under gravity. The resultant calculations enabled him to assign dimensions based on mass, length, a French-inspired initiative for international cooperation in metrology led to the signing in 1875 of the Metre Convention. Initially the convention only covered standards for the metre and the kilogram, one of each was selected at random to become the International prototype metre and International prototype kilogram that replaced the mètre des Archives and kilogramme des Archives respectively. Each member state was entitled to one of each of the prototypes to serve as the national prototype for that country. Initially its prime purpose was a periodic recalibration of national prototype metres. The official language of the Metre Convention is French and the version of all official documents published by or on behalf of the CGPM is the French-language version
System of measurement
A system of measurement is a collection of units of measurement and rules relating them to each other. Systems of measurement have historically been important and defined for the purposes of science and commerce, systems of measurement in modern use include the metric system, the imperial system, and United States customary units. The French Revolution gave rise to the system, and this has spread around the world. In most systems, length and time are base quantities, science developments showed that either electric charge or electric current could be added to extend the set of base quantities by which many other metrological units could be easily defined. Other quantities, such as power and speed, are derived from the set, for example. Such arrangements were satisfactory in their own contexts, the preference for a more universal and consistent system only gradually spread with the growth of science. Changing a measurement system has substantial financial and cultural costs which must be offset against the advantages to be obtained using a more rational system.
However pressure built up, including scientists and engineers for conversion to a more rational. The unifying characteristic is that there was some definition based on some standard, eventually cubits and strides gave way to customary units to met the needs of merchants and scientists. In the metric system and other recent systems, a basic unit is used for each base quantity. Often secondary units are derived from the units by multiplying by powers of ten. Thus the basic unit of length is the metre, a distance of 1.234 m is 1,234 millimetres. Metrication is complete or nearly complete in almost all countries, US customary units are heavily used in the United States and to some degree in Liberia. Traditional Burmese units of measurement are used in Burma, U. S. units are used in limited contexts in Canada due to the large volume of trade, there is considerable use of Imperial weights and measures, despite de jure Canadian conversion to metric. In the United States, metric units are used almost universally in science, widely in the military, and partially in industry, but customary units predominate in household use.
At retail stores, the liter is a used unit for volume, especially on bottles of beverages. Some other standard non-SI units are still in use, such as nautical miles and knots in aviation. Metric systems of units have evolved since the adoption of the first well-defined system in France in 1795, during this evolution the use of these systems has spread throughout the world, first to non-English-speaking countries, and to English speaking countries
United States customary units
United States customary units are a system of measurements commonly used in the United States. The United States customary system developed from English units which were in use in the British Empire before the US declared its independence, the British system of measures was overhauled in 1824 to create the imperial system, changing the definitions of some units. Therefore, while many U. S. units are similar to their Imperial counterparts. The majority of U. S. customary units were redefined in terms of the meter and these definitions were refined by the international yard and pound agreement of 1959. Americans primarily use customary units in commercial activities, as well as for personal and social use, in science, many sectors of industry and some of government, metric units are used. The International System of Units, the form of the metric system, is preferred for many uses by the U. S. National Institute of Standards. The United States system of units is similar to the British imperial system, both systems are derived from English units, a system which had evolved over the millennia before American independence, and which had its roots in Roman and Anglo-Saxon units.
The customary system was championed by the U. S. -based International Institute for Preserving and Perfecting Weights, advocates of the customary system saw the French Revolutionary, or metric, system as atheistic. An auxiliary of the Institute in Ohio published a poem with wording such as down with every metric scheme and A perfect inch, one adherent of the customary system called it a just weight and a just measure, which alone are acceptable to the Lord. The U. S. government passed the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, the legislation states that the federal government has a responsibility to assist industry as it voluntarily converts to the metric system, i. e. metrification. This is most evident in U. S. labeling requirements on food products, according to the CIA Factbook, the United States is one of three nations that have not adopted the metric system as their official system of weights and measures. U. S. customary units are used on consumer products. Metric units are standard in science, medicine, as well as many sectors of industry and government, the metric system lacks a parallel to the foot.
Frequently, these units designate quite different sizes, for example, the mile ranged by country from one-half to five U. S. miles and pound had varying definitions. Historically, a range of non-SI units were used in the U. S. and in Britain. This article deals only with the commonly used or officially defined in the U. S. For measuring length, the U. S. customary system uses the inch, foot and mile, since July 1,1959, these have been defined on the basis of 1 yard =0.9144 meters except for some applications in surveying. The U. S. the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries agreed on this definition, the NAD27 was replaced in the 1980s by the North American Datum of 1983, which is defined in meters
listen); non-SI unit, symbol: t), commonly referred to as the metric ton in the United States and Canada, is a non-SI metric unit of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms[1][2][3][4] or one megagram (symbol: Mg). It is equivalent to approximately 2,204.6 pounds,[5] 1.102 short tons (US) or 0.984 long tons (UK). Although not part of the SI, the tonne is accepted for use with SI units and prefixes by the International Committee for Weights and Measures.[6]
