Did they get an attoboy for that?

Still not precise enough to weigh your average runway model.

/"omg I just inhaled some air! I am SOOOO fat!"

Damn, I thought *I* was the only one who read Biology News Net!

/first & last time

11000001101010111001101011
So....
0010011001101010000
= 01111011100111001

hexadecimal

ewww... sorry.
That's binary.
Wait a sec...

Cool indeed.

I'm a bio major. I want to care, but I just can't.

DNA's a pretty big molecule as far as molecules go, but it's still a great accomplishment.

What I'm curious about is when they'll come up with a way to measure mass precisely enough that we can come up with a definition for the kilogram which doesn't have to be based on a physical object.

Will it improve my sex life?

-IR

So, a couple of billion of these can lift a grape.

OK.

somebody needs to put the trs80 away...

Religious farks claiming it was designed by 'god' in 3...2...1...

Analogy

oooH! It can be explained...but only with theory, mathematically, and philisophically. Which, as odd as it seems, applies to our (human) understanding of such Logical ideas. Uggg...

I wonder, do people feel stupid after their 3...2..1... comment crashes and burns?

Surely, this evidence supports the widespread belief that DNA was designed by dog.

Wait.

moltov

Cantilevers were invented by.... God?


/I dont really get what your point was.

Analogy, I don't see why we can't just define what a kg is without the large weight in France. It's a relic, that's all.

Analogy:

What I'm curious about is when they'll come up with a way to measure mass precisely enough that we can come up with a definition for the kilogram which doesn't have to be based on a physical object.

I don't think that's the way that they'll eventually do it. They've already got some particle counting experiments but they don't do a terribly good job. The Watt balance is a more promising prospect. NIST is working on it, not sure if anyone else is at the moment. It's the kind of thing NIST exists to do.

Attoboy, scientists!

/note to self: must get Total Fark to beat yotta to teh funnay

...which is still a half-attogram heavier than that fat pig Lara Flynn Boyle.

...And this will help get me laid how?

Just to point out, a DNA molecule, like a piece of string can be anywhere from very very short (1 base pair) to really, rather long.

Analogy

Can the kilogram not be measured in terms of energy at a certain velocity?

A kilogram is the weight of one liter of pure water.

Just in time for the Surgeon General's new BMI directives.

/Ain't no time to wonder why, whoopee we're all going to diet.

LoneCoon
A kilogram is the weight of one liter of pure water.

At what temperature? (as well as other possible measurements that have to be involved)

And how would you define a liter?

not to be a threadjacker, but i was amused when I found my BMI score says Im overweight (and half-way to obese), at 48kg.. and I honestly dont reckon my body would survive if I lost another 2-3kg.. Its understandable why some women think theyre overweight, given this crappy generalised 'BMI' scale.

Crunch61 wins.

True story:
I teach Japanese science students how to write in English. One lad was writing about a type of microscope, and started to explain the role of the "coontilever"...

Caltech pwns these guys: a prof in my department has it to three orders of magnitude better.

World's most sensitive scales weigh a zeptogram
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7208

A kilogram is 1000 grams, idoit

Uchiha-Cycliste
--------------

If you don't want to wade through a large pile of government progagandi and bull then you shouldn't have come here. 15% of all posts are from dis-informants, contracted by companies whose only goal is to generate consensus for whomever's policy is paying the bill.

/how else do you explain all that downtime recently
//honesly, the PNAC said something about using Quebec to stir trouble in parliment.........
//tinfoil is for the weak

Uchiha_Cycliste

Well the nuts and bolts of it are as follows. It's a program with the aim of improvign the public schools. Way it measures the schools is with annual standardized exams. There's a certain baseline that each school should score at. If a school is below the baseline it has to do better the following year or it loses some of its federal funding. Schools above the baseline have to stay above it or lose some federal funding. If a school doesn't improve above the baseline after a couple years then it can basically be declared a lost cause and the students allowed to go other local public schools with better test scores. And as for those schools that do well? They also have to get better over time, no matter how well they're doing, or they can lose funding.

The problem with it is that school funding is just totally unequal with the worst funded of schools being among those at the bottom. The act provides nothing in the way of extra funding or materials for the schools to have the means to do better. Nor does it do anything to equalize funding for schools.

Currently there's a few states that are suing the federal government over No Child Left Behind. Mostly on the grounds that the government not the states should pay for the testing. Regardless of the stated nature of the lawsuits each one is ultimately based on No Child Left Behind being just a mess and being set up to actually make worse the very problem it claims to want to fix.

Uchiha_Cycliste

Well as for what's tested and how, that's all in the law, already determined. The cost of adminstering the tests is up to the individual states to cover. And it's nothing with a hidden diabolical agenda, like lots of government programs just something that was easy to sell and that no one stood against because "it's for the children". Put it this way, in the last presidential election John Kerry couldn't use it to get at Bush because Kerry voted for No Child Left Behind when it came up for approval in the Senate.

"Gentlemen, I dare say that's one simple machine!"

The big story here isn't the resolution at which the device can operate, it's the size of the device. Cantilevers, as everyone who went to elementary school knows, are an important machines. And until now, we didn't have a way to build things like giant spinning swing sets and the flying hammers, for our nano parks. Now we finally have a way to repay our gracious micro-bacteria overlords for not giving us the spontaneous nose plumage.

They finished the nano technology building at the university I worked at, right about the same time I quit working there. I hear it's really cool inside, but I wouldn't know--couldn't fit through the tiny door.

-Chilton

scuffer:

The BMI is just a generalized dealie. I know that if I were at my ideal body weight I'd be rather skinny. A friend of mine who is several inches shorter than I am,is by the BMI's account, MY ideal body weight. And he's actually kinda skinny lookin.

/not sayin I couldn't lose another 10 lbs.
//have lost 35-40 since last Sept.

To those of you discussing the possibility of defining a kilogram of one liter of water:

Water can be defined multiple ways. There is standard water, where the hydrogens and oxygens contain the earth natural abundance of the various isotopes. But what about heavy water (formed with deuterium instead of neutronelss hydrogen)? Excluding that possiblity by using a definition based on standard abundances, what if there is some cosmic flux that causes the isotope balance to shift such that a liter of standard water changes its weight?

Your idea doesn't strike me as having the universal appeal sought by the anal jerks in charge of this sort of thing.

YES! This is awesome! I know no one cares, but I did my undergrad in physical organic chemistry at Cornell, and I know all the people listed in this article. John Marohn, one of the profs collaborating on the project, was my undergrad advisor.

Okay, I'll shut up now.

No child left behind?? WTF!? I need a bunch of tiny dick jokes for an assignment tomorrow and this thread has proven itself worthless.

Interesting fact: the wieght of fat people's DNA is actually measured in candygrams.

^ hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha......hahahahahah.. whew, oh god that was funny. I though I'm pretty much immune to fark humor anymore, but that one made me laugh out loud in horrible roaring bursts.

This was possibly the most interesting article I've ever read on Fark. Thanks Submitter!