Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The most official water costs $120k a gallon

signoregalilei.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 196 posts

Re: The most official water costs $120k a gallon

#61

Post by vel0city »

artisinal wrote: post #26
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now do metric vs imperial.

Nothing screams freedom more than using ancient terms like horsepower and measuring tires in inches and percentages. The other day I heard an American talk about a TV being 65 inches. Took me a while to understand they had a 165 centimeter diagonal television.

Speaking of tires, its actually a crazy mixture of units here in the US. You might have a size like P215/65R15 which translates to a radial passenger tire of a 15" rim, 215mm wide tread (sidewall to sidewall), and an aspect ratio of 65 which is a ratio of the sidewall to tread width.

So a tire size is expressed in inches, millimeters, and ratios.

Re: The most official water costs $120k a gallon

#62

Post by masklinn »

georgeburdell wrote: post #48
sudb wrote: post #3

Reminds of me of the "most expensive peanut butter" at ~$2.44/g - sold by NIST, I assume for some sort of peanut butter factory process calibration: https://shop.nist.gov/ccrz__ProductDetails?sku=2387

Yes, it’s a bit frightening to know what a hidden dependency NIST is on many things. In my industry, all calibrations ultimately derive from physical NIST standards for resistance, frequency, etc.

It’s frightening that… NIST is doing the very thing it was established to do back when it was called the Bureau of Standards?

Re: The most official water costs $120k a gallon

#63

Post by masklinn »

al_borland wrote: post #59
Timpanzee wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only think it makes sense for humans because it makes sense for you, where you live the same way you feel changing a thermostat by 1F is perfect but 1C is too much: that’s true for you, not universally. Fahrenheit functionally requires you to be biased in order for it to seem like a good system.

It provides greater granularity in the range of human comfort, without descending into decimals. How is that not more useful for day-to-day human usage? 0F is cold, 100F is hot. I experience both of these temperatures outside where I live every year. -20C to 40C seems much more arbitrary as a way to measure the zone humans mostly live in. I would wager that the outdoor and room temperature are an overwhelming majorit…

> 0F is cold, 100F is hot. I experience both of these temperatures outside where I live every year.

Most people never experience anywhere near 0F in their lives.

> -20C to -40C seems much more arbitrary as a way to measure the zone humans mostly live in.

The zone most humans live in does not routinely (if ever) get anywhere near -20, to say nothing of -40.

Re: The most official water costs $120k a gallon

#64

Post by buildsjets »

cyphar wrote: post #31
sudb wrote: post #3

Reminds of me of the "most expensive peanut butter" at ~$2.44/g - sold by NIST, I assume for some sort of peanut butter factory process calibration: https://shop.nist.gov/ccrz__ProductDetails?sku=2387

For more context, sample reference materials from the NIST reference catalogue are not meant to be exceptionally high purity examples of the sample -- SRMs are usually commercially-produced products. The real value is that each sample comes with a datasheet with incredibly detailed and accurate measurements that are (as you said) used for calibration of measuring devices in industrial settings. To quote a Veritasium…

Truth. I once paid nearly $500 for a set of 17 certified, calibrated wooden pencils, with documentation showing that each one met their rated hardness levels of 9H thru 6B. And for $500, they don't even come with erasers, that is an added-cost option.

https://www.gardco.com/product/pencil-hardness-test-kit-astm...

Re: The most official water costs $120k a gallon

#65

Post by chermi »

xgulfie wrote: post #47
chermi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reference point is the triple point, and invariant.

Sure technically yes, but also celsius is now technically defined as just Kelvin plus 273.15. Degrees have technically been redefined as exactly 1.380649×10^−23 joules

Why is that only "technically yes"? It's precisely how the thermodynamic and empirical temperature scales are matched.

Re: The most official water costs $120k a gallon

#66

Post by ajsnigrutin »

sudb wrote: post #3

Reminds of me of the "most expensive peanut butter" at ~$2.44/g - sold by NIST, I assume for some sort of peanut butter factory process calibration: https://shop.nist.gov/ccrz__ProductDetails?sku=2387

You can still make cookies out of reference and/or lab materials :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crjxpZHv7Hk

Re: The most official water costs $120k a gallon

#67

Post by arjie »

warmdarksea wrote: post #18
artisinal wrote: post #5

This is why we should ditch Celsius for Kelvin. I never liked how we coupled 0 and 100 to where water freezes and boils under certain conditions. Kelvin doesn't rely on non-invariant reference points.

this is actually why i like fahrenheit the most... 0F is "really cold" and 100F is "really hot", whereas in celsius 0C is "kind of cold" and 100C is "uninhabitable". it makes sense for the 0-100 range to be reserved for temperatures frequently encountered in our habitat as humans i think...

Haha, judging by my personal standards, we need to set the zero to 15 C and the 100 to 40 C. My Degrees Arjie are going to be a revolution.

Re: The most official water costs $120k a gallon

#68

Post by andy99 »

buildsjets wrote: post #9
cjs_ac wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SRM 2387 pairs well with a cup of ISO 3103. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103

Cap your meal off with a NIST 1196a standard issue cigarette? I am told they taste like drywall and taxes. https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2020/02/nist-releases-... Perhaps you would prefer some standard issue meat. https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/product/sial/nist1546a

I had seen the cigarette. But but not the meat which costs $2,690 for four tuna-can size cans and is a mix of pork and chicken

Thinking of a concept for a restaurant meal along the lines of a calibrated fried spam dinner, that costs ~2k for about a can worth, fried like they do in Hawaii.

Come to think of it, would love to see an “iron chef- calibrated foods” edition.

Re: The most official water costs $120k a gallon

#69

Post by al_borland »

masklinn wrote: post #63
al_borland wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It provides greater granularity in the range of human comfort, without descending into decimals. How is that not more useful for day-to-day human usage? 0F is cold, 100F is hot. I experience both of these temperatures outside where I live every year. -20C to 40C seems much more arbitrary as a way to measure the zone humans mostly live in. I would wager that the outdoor and room temperature are an overwhelming majorit…

> 0F is cold, 100F is hot. I experience both of these temperatures outside where I live every year. Most people never experience anywhere near 0F in their lives. > -20C to -40C seems much more arbitrary as a way to measure the zone humans mostly live in. The zone most humans live in does not routinely (if ever) get anywhere near -20, to say nothing of -40.

The -40C was a typo, should have been 40C, to mirror the 0F to 100F, rounding a bit to make it less silly. It’s been fixed now.

Millions do experience 0F, and it’s ok to not use the full range. At or around 0F is cold, as you move closer or beyond it, it’s cold. As you move closer to or beyond 100F, it’s hot. Most people would likely prefer to never deal with 100F.

Re: The most official water costs $120k a gallon

#70

Post by quickthrowman »

ajmurmann wrote: post #19
warmdarksea wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is actually why i like fahrenheit the most... 0F is "really cold" and 100F is "really hot", whereas in celsius 0C is "kind of cold" and 100C is "uninhabitable". it makes sense for the 0-100 range to be reserved for temperatures frequently encountered in our habitat as humans i think...

This makes sense if weather is the main focus. For things like cooking Celsius is great though.

The temperature water boils at is irrelevant when you can just look at it to see if it’s boiling. Any stove will get it hot enough, assuming you have enough energy.
Post reply on HN