PURPOSE: To show an original standard meter.
DESCRIPTION: A calibrated 19th century brass meter. There is a message stating that in 1883 when the Brown Physicist Dr. Eli Whitney Blake sent this meter to be checked it was returned with the note "Return this bar to Queen and Co. and demand what you paid for it".
International agreement has allowed only the velocity of light to be called fundamental because it can be measured more exactly. The length of a meter has been redefined more precisely as the distance traveled by light in an interval of 1/c.
Please give advance notice because it is stored in the History of Physics display case on the fourth floor.
AJP Volume 57, no. 11, pp. 988 "The Politics of the Meter Stick", J. L. Heilbron. (Nov. 1989)
EQUIPMENT: Standard meter. Stored on the fourth floor in the display case.
SETUP NOTES: Fourth floor display case.
Updated by Jun Qi in 3/1/2000