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The most official water costs $120k a gallon
- pack_stimulus 3mo agoLoved reading this. Thank you!
- sudb 3mo agoReminds 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 https://shop.nist.gov/ccrz__ProductDetails?sku=2387
- cjs_ac 3mo agoSRM 2387 pairs well with a cup of ISO 3103. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103
- buildsjets 3mo agoCap 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-new-standard-cigarette-testing-flammability-mattresses-and 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 https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/product/sial/nist1546a
- sushisource 3mo agoA suggested product is "domestic sludge", lol. This is such a fun rabbit hole: https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/product/sial/nist2781 https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/product/sial/nist2781
- inigyou 3mo agoPretty much every process conducted at scale will have such reference samples.
- bensyverson 3mo agoNew music genre just dropped
- tshaddox 3mo agoIt's only $508 per cigarette: https://shop.nist.gov/ccrz__ProductDetails?sku=1196a&cclcl=en_US https://shop.nist.gov/ccrz__ProductDetails?sku=1196a&cclcl=e...
- ryancw 3mo ago400 cigarettes actually! Not too bad.
- throwup238 3mo agoThat’s $508 for two cartons for 400 cigarettes total, so $1.27 per cigarette. They’re not characterized like the peanut butter, they’re just manufactured to a specific QC standard. California/New York prices are easily $0.75/cigg so it’s not that much more expensive.
- gerdesj 3mo agoFags in the UK are around £13-20 per 20! https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/search?query=cigarettes&inputType=free+text https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/search?query=cigarettes&inp...
- selimthegrim 3mo agoNow I wonder what the GOST ones were like
- andy99 3mo agoI 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.
- tedd4u 3mo ago"It was produced by ISO Technical Committee 34 (Food products), Sub-Committee 8 (Tea)."
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- cyphar 3mo agoFor 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 video about the topic from a few years ago[1], "the thing you're paying for is not the peanut butter, it's the knowledge of exactly what is in the peanut butter". [1]: https://youtu.be/esQyYGezS7c?t=226 https://youtu.be/esQyYGezS7c?t=226
- buildsjets 3mo agoTruth. 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-d3363-jpia/01t5I0000023pqaQAA https://www.gardco.com/product/pencil-hardness-test-kit-astm...
- foobarian 3mo agoCan I ask why :-) Sounds like an interesting project.
- cwillu 3mo agoHis link includes procedures, which suggest he was testing the hardness of some surface coating or similar: > For the pencil hardness test, reference ASTM D3363, pencils of increasing hardness values are moved over the surface in a precisely defined way until one lead damages the surface. Surface Hardness is defined by the hardest pencil grade which just fails to damage the surface. > Observe the pencil track. Sufficient pressure must have been applied either to cut or damage the coating or to crush the lead pencil point. > If neither coating damage or pencil point crushing is observed, repeat the test until a definite observation is made. > If scratching or damage of the surface occurs, proceed with the next softer pencil grade and repeat the testing process until a pencil lead grade is found which crushes and does not damage the coating. > If crushing of the hardest lead should occur, the coating is therefore extremely hard and is beyond the measuring range of this test
- georgeburdell 3mo agoYes, 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.
- masklinn 3mo agoIt’s frightening that… NIST is doing the very thing it was established to do back when it was called the Bureau of Standards?
- GolfPopper 3mo agoI suspect the fear comes from both seeing NIST as a single point of critical failure, and perhaps also that it is a far less resilient and/or far more vulnerable, institution than may have been previously realized.
- ajsnigrutin 3mo agoYou can still make cookies out of reference and/or lab materials :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crjxpZHv7Hk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crjxpZHv7Hk
- alanfalcon 3mo ago[dead]
- artisinal 3mo agoThis 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.
- analog31 3mo agoI think that both the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales are now defined in terms of Kelvin and a formula. Most if not all of the units of measure are no longer related to their history except for an agreement to make the new units match the old ones at some point.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3mo agoThe US is technically metric in that the units are defined in terms of the metric equivalent. A US inch is exactly 2.54cm.
- mikewarot 3mo agoYou can thank Carl Edvard Johansson[1] for that, the inventor of the gage block.[2] He was the one who decided to make it a convenient value, according to Wikipedia[3] As a result of the definitions above, the U.S. inch was effectively defined as 25.4000508 mm (with a reference temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit) and the UK inch at 25.399977 mm (with a reference temperature of 62 degrees Fahrenheit). When Carl Edvard Johansson started manufacturing gauge blocks in inch sizes in 1912, Johansson's compromise was to manufacture gauge blocks with a nominal size of 25.4mm, with a reference temperature of 20 degrees Celsius, accurate to within a few parts per million of both official definitions. Because Johansson's blocks were so popular, his blocks became the de facto standard for manufacturers internationally, with other manufacturers of gauge blocks following Johansson's definition by producing blocks designed to be equivalent to his. This makes it relatively easy to handle making metric threads on imperial machines, and vice versa, because you can use 50 / 127 gear tooth pairs to do the ratios. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Edvard_Johansson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Edvard_Johansson [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_block https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_block [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inch#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inch#History
- sandworm101 3mo agoAs 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.
- ameliaquining 3mo agoYeah, 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.
- sandworm101 3mo agoRarity isn't really an issue when buying laboratory quantities. Purity drives the price.
- spullara 3mo agoA US gallon of deuterium water costs roughly $2,600 to $3,800, while a gallon of pure tritium water (super-heavy water) would cost about $44 million.
- BizarroLand 3mo agoMakes me want to go to the ocean and start filtering out water somehow.
- delecti 3mo agoThere are a variety of ways to do it, but you'd want to be careful that you don't attract attention from your local nuclear regulatory agency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Production_methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Production_methods
- inigyou 3mo agoYou can centrifuge it. Heavier molecules move closer to the bottom. Repeat until you reach the desired purity. You need shitloads of ordinary water to extract a liter of heavy water. And I'd be surprised if there's any superheavy water in that, because tritium radioactively decays. Fun fact: Heavy water is slightly toxic to humans. If you only drank heavy water, you'd die as it shifts the chemical reactions in your body out of balance. A moderate amount is fine though.
- dorianmariecom 3mo agogallon is not a si unit ;)
- rwmj 3mo agoInteresting article but left me wondering why they don't use ¹H₂¹⁶O as the "standard water"? Surely you can make that (relatively) easily in a centrifuge by spinning out the lightest fraction of water.
- thayne 3mo agoAt the very least that has the advantage that it's possible to make more of it, so you aren't dependent on a limited sample of standard water.
- ameliaquining 3mo agoThe article doesn't mention this, but they actually did make more. Or rather, they put together a new sample, VSMOW2, in 1999. It's exactly the same as VSMOW, to within measurement error. Like the original, you can buy it from the USGS. Documentation (including how it was prepared): https://nucleus.iaea.org/sites/AnalyticalReferenceMaterials/Shared%20Documents/ReferenceMaterials/StableIsotopes/VSMOW2/certificate%20%20VSMOW2%20SLAP2%20052026.pdf https://nucleus.iaea.org/sites/AnalyticalReferenceMaterials/... This actually goes both ways; VSMOW itself was carefully made (by mixing in small amounts of water from other sources) to match the composition of an earlier reference water sample, NBS-1, which came from the Potomac River (one supposes it was a convenience sample). NBS-1 is no longer used as a point of reference, since everyone's agreed to use VSMOW instead, but the USGS sells it too.
- cozzyd 3mo agoJust wait for the new reflecting pool standard of official water.
- barbegal 3mo ago18 O enriched water is available to buy but the pricing suggests it's quite expensive to separate 16 O from 18 O. And you get much less variability in the ratio of isotopes from mixing compared to separating a single isotope as much as possible.
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- cactusplant7374 3mo agoHow does the water taste?
- fuzzfactor 3mo agoCompletely decadent, with only a slight aftertaste bearing a noticeable hint of regret . . .
- deadbabe 3mo agolike what you most want but most can’t have, and what you most can’t have is what you already once had, but lost.
- jarenmf 3mo agomost 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 them in relation to standards like VSMOW
- pseudohadamard 3mo agoJust remember that if you decide to brew up a cup from VSMOW you have to do it in strict conformance to ISO 3103.
- perpetuallunch 3mo agoI prefer my tea brewed with SLAP, or more recently SLAP2.
- lstodd 3mo agoI wonder what's the standard for ethanol and, therefore, vodka.
- pseudohadamard 3mo agoOh, that one's easy. I'll leave it for Qualified Russian(tm), Boris, to explain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IivdU8l1NOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IivdU8l1NOg
- 1970-01-01 3mo agoSlap the 'organic' label on it and sell it at restaurants for $150k/L. It will sell.
- tomsmeding 3mo agoI can't help but read VSMOW as Very Standard Mean Ocean Water.
- tomcam 3mo agoI got mine at a NIST surplus sale for just $55k/gallon. I think it was mismarked. OK I just made the whole story up
- fionic 3mo agoIdk I feel like if you bought in bulk you would get a discount on the additional mL purchased.
- Duanemclemore 3mo agoNIST Cigarettes are a mere $204 per carton. Depending on what state you live in, that's not bad these days. https://shop.nist.gov/ccrz__ProductDetails?sku=1196a&cclcl=en_US https://shop.nist.gov/ccrz__ProductDetails?sku=1196a&cclcl=e...
- VTimofeenko 3mo agoShows $508 for 2 cartons, so 254 per. NY has probably most expensive smokes, ranging $140-155 per carton
- plaguuuuuu 3mo agoAustralia is US$350-$400
- perpetuallunch 3mo agoOr retail at $15 per pack of twenty over-under the counter at your nearest “convenience” store, if it hasn’t been fire bomber over night in Melbourne, thought that seems to have eased off a bit since they arrested that guy. https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15975949/Melbourne-Jesse-Hadchiti-arson-tobacco-wars.html https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15975949/Melbourne-Je...
- ornornor 3mo agoGood, making them very expensive is one of the most effective ways to reduce smoking and all associated suffering, cancers, health costs, deaths.
- throw1234567891 3mo agoAnd increase smuggling, black market, and risk of harm by consuming dubious quality products.
- ornornor 3mo ago
- bananamogul 3mo agoSo to fill a typical 20,000-gallon pool with this water would cost $2.4 billion. That might even give a trillionaire pause.
- rainmaking 3mo agoDoes NIST have a restaurant?
- extraduder_ire 3mo agoI hadn't put much thought into why it was called "Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water". My first hint should have been that Austria is landlocked.