NPL stages unique on-line experiments

Does your computer’s clock always run slow?

How good are human beings at estimating?

How much does gravity vary over the globe?

With your help we are attempting to find answers to these questions as part of a huge on-line Web event to celebrate World Metrology Day 2001, Sunday 20th May. This is the first time NPL have attempted such a global experiment and we need you to help us make it a success, whether you have any scientific training or not.

The Web address to join in is:
www.npl.co.uk/wmd

The more participants we have, the more accurate the answers will be for the following three experiments, all based on the notion of measurement:
A simple experiment that gathers the time from the PC clock of the person taking part and analyses the difference from the NPL atomic clock. The results will show the variation of a large group of users’ clocks from the NPL atomic clock; this kind of experiment has never been done before.

We estimate every time we make a manual measurement, but how accurate are we and can we develop our estimation? This experiment investigates this and will determine if there is an unconscious bias in measurement.

We are all aware of the effects of gravity, just think of Newton and his apple! This experiment will measure the local gravity field using the classic pendulum experiment. This is the most challenging experiment, but if it can be done carefully enough then the small variation of the gravity field with latitude may be apparent.

Do not worry if you miss out on Sunday 20th May as the Website will remain open until Sunday 8th July after which the experiment will finally close. The results will be published at the same link on the NPL Website from Wednesday 11th July.

Happy experimenting and many thanks for your help!

Additional Notes

The National Physical Laboratory is the UK’s national standards laboratory and its mission is to realise and devolve standards to trade, industry, science, health and safety, and to promote the public understanding of science.

Metrology is the science of measurement and the backbone or science and technology. We are running these experiments to encourage people to think about measurement and the relevance of this important field to everyday life. Much of the modern world relies on accurate measurement, which must be consistent around the globe. Imagine the problem of manufacturing anything if every time you bought a nut or bolt it had a slightly different thread because of inaccurate length measurement. One way of ensuring that a measurement is accurate is a direct line of traceability back to national and international standards. So your round peg will not fit in a square hole, and will not even fit in a round hole, if the hole and peg have not been measured to the same international length standards!

World Metrology Day is the anniversary of the first signing of the Metre Convention in 1875, a treaty between nations with the aim of promoting the International System of Units (SI). The use of a common rational system of units has enormous benefits to trade and industry and, if fully implemented, could have helped avoid costly mistakes like the Mars Climate Orbiter mission failure.