| Name | National Institute of Standards and Technology |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Resources | Units, metrology, and technical manuals |
Definition and context
The National Institute of Standards and Technology publishes materials on measurement, units, uncertainty, and other technical methods. Its guides help present results so that it is possible to understand what was measured and how its uncertainty was assessed.
Consulting an NIST manual does not eliminate the need to understand the specific experiment. A statistical formula requires its assumptions, and a shared unit does not guarantee that two procedures measure exactly the same thing. References should therefore point to the chapter or section that supports the explanation. This page identifies a reference source without presenting the institution as the author, reviewer, or endorser of SciClue content, or turning a general guide into certification of a result.
What we know and its limits
Introductory reference sheet. Properties and applications depend on measurement conditions; consult the sources before making comparisons.
Follow the evidence
The original sources for exploring this explanation and its limits.
- Technical Note 1297 · Reporting Uncertainty
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Information needed to communicate measurement results. - SI Units
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Base and derived units of the International System.
Image credits
National Institute of Standards and Technology — NIST campus aerial 2019 · Antony-22 · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Original source · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Resized and re-encoded as JPEG; full framing preserved.