Visit to the Metrology Center!

Not long ago I went on this field trip to the National Metrology Center for a brief visit. As expected, I was able to bring back many nuggets of wisdom to share with you!

 We had this briefing before our tour of the center, and I think this is considered "new knowledge"

 Basically this is the main purpose of the NMS, and as shown, it's measurements are used for a variety of purposes, mainly for industrial and engineering uses.

 Up next is a revision of what we had learnt about measurements so far:

 

Quite complicated I must say. But wait! What is this? We still have the derived units and prefixes!

 And whoops. There goes my brain.

 Moving on to the tour. We were introduced to the weights first. It was amazing how accurate the weights were, and how the lab was kept clean, away from dust or dirt to allow accurate measurements to take place. I can't really tell how much a speck of dust can affect measurements, but hey, then again, it always pays to play safe.

 

And there you have it. Reminds me of the stacking dolls.

Moving on, we went to the metre measurements, where they made use of industrial lasers to provide deadly accurate measurements. The professor explained that these accurate measurements were used mostly for industrial purposes like making cars, weapons, etc. You wouldn't want a car that is long on one side and short on the other.

 

Yup. Couldn't understand most of what she was saying at all.

Finally, we have the temperature measurements! I felt that this was the climax of the whole trip, as that machine below could allow the three states of water; gas, liquid, and solid to exist together at the same time.

 This is called a triple point water bath, and it can easily allow the three states of water to exist together by maintaining a constant temperature. Cool. How I wished I had one of these at home.

 I have come to the end of this post. Although we can learn many things in our Science lesson, I personally feel that having fieldtrips would allow us to integrate our knowledge, and perhaps even learn new things. I hope that we can have more of such field trips in the future.