Reference kilo shows mysterious weight loss
First Lindsay, then Nicole, now the standard unit of mass
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French scientists have been offered a welcome distraction from their country’s dismal rugby performance with the news that the much-loved “reference” kilo is mysteriously losing weight.
AP reports that the 118 year old “reference” kilo, which like many an inbred French aristo is kept locked up in a Chateau southwest of Paris, is 50 micrograms adrift of the average of other standard kilo weights. Many of these were made of the same materials and even at the same time as the French original.
Richard Davies, of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures admitted to the AP “We don’t really have a good hypothesis for it.”
He added, “We could obviously use a better definition.”
Well, we can suggest at least two. Even Brussels has had to admit its defeat in its battle to impose the now-flawed kilogram on the British. Surely even our Gallic cousins will have to consider its introduction as a standard world wide weight now. Or, they could take a revolutionary step and embrace El Reg’s own revolutionary system of measurement. OK, we haven’t gotten round to defining our unit of mass yet, but it’s bound to be related to a Bulgarian airbag held in vacuum.®
COMMENTS
@all you claiming this is a victory over the metric system...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_%28measure%29
I'm not sure I still follow what a pound is anymore...
Cheers,
Jos
@Richard Stubbs
Gravity is not dependent up on the rotational speed of the earth. It is an intrinsic property of the volume of the earth.
Now, changes in rock density beneath a location will affect the microGravity in that region. I used to be a Geophysicist and we would use Gavitometers to measure the local gravitational field in a region and use that to model the underlying rock densities. While doing these measurements, you need to calculate the gravitational effect of the sun and the moon at the same time/location to use as a corrective factor.
@sheep related
Funny that, while just having celebrated the demise of the Metric rule, you immediately adopt the same standards in a new measurement system. Surely, as a red-blooded Englishman, you would prefer to avoid the centisheep and rather have one sheep equal six rumps, a rump equals three heads and a head equals seven hooves ?
Proof that the method is better : Kate Moss weighs no more than a rump and two hooves. Now ain't that scientific ?
And as for the culinary complaints, suffice it to say that coming from an Englishman, it ain't worth a doink.
;-)
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