The most official water costs $120k a gallon

Post by pseudohadamard » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 5:31 AM UTC

jarenmf wrote: post #76

most needs for such water are for calibration of instruments - many labs run stable isotopes measurements which has many applications from tracing how plants use water to measuring your metabolic base rate .. so the main use case it to calibrate instruments because it's really difficult to have an absolute measurement of stable isotope ratios from first principles - and the ratios are so small you typically express t…

Post by sandworm101 » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 6:09 AM UTC

ameliaquining wrote: post #105

sandworm101 wrote: post #7

As specialized world-class lab supplies and reagents go, that is not very expensive. Stuff like pure Xe (for space thrusters) can be more by mass.

Yeah, but people find it perfectly intuitive that things like xenon are expensive because the material itself is rare; that kind of scarcity is a thing humans have dealt with since the Stone Age. Whereas this stuff is just water.

Post by DonHopkins » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 6:30 AM UTC

juleiie wrote: post #11

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

[flagged]

Post by perpetuallunch » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 7:00 AM UTC

pseudohadamard wrote: post #141

jarenmf wrote: post #76

most needs for such water are for calibration of instruments - many labs run stable isotopes measurements which has many applications from tracing how plants use water to measuring your metabolic base rate .. so the main use case it to calibrate instruments because it's really difficult to have an absolute measurement of stable isotope ratios from first principles - and the ratios are so small you typically express t…

Just remember that if you decide to brew up a cup from VSMOW you have to do it in strict conformance to ISO 3103.

Post by plibblr » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 8:12 AM UTC

bigDinosaur wrote: post #142

al_borland wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always been my primary argument in favor of Fahrenheit. It makes sense for humans, which is all a majority of the population really cares about. In addition, it's more granular. Sometimes turning the thermostat up or down by 1C could be too much, where 1F is just right. In science and math, I can see where having round numbers for commonly used temperatures would be useful, but if 0C and 100C are the only pl…

I can't express just how profoundly culturally biased this is. There is absolutely nothing about Fahrenheit that 'just makes sense' to someone who grew up with Celsius instead. Your comment about granularity is also nonsensical. I can adjust my heating by more granularity than 1C. That has literally nothing to do with the units being used.