VEEN AS REFERENCE
We´ve always admired the platinum-iridium alloy 1 meter prototype still held at the BIPM(*. 1 meter was intended to equal 10-7 or one ten-millionth of the length of the meridian through Paris from pole to the equator. Who says things don´t become like we declare them! In 1960 the definition of 1 meter was based upon a wavelength of krypton-86 radiation. In 1983 the meter was defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second.
For this admiration we´ve always thought of VEEN as the reference water for great wine and food tasting. Jonathan Wynn, from the University of South Florida, inquired if he could obtain a small amount of VEEN to use as a stable isotope standard in his lab. He measures “very small differences in isotope ratios that act as a natural, but otherwise invisible, tracer of the water's identity — sort of a fingerprint of its origins and history”. Asst. Prof. Jonathan Wynn also states: “Importantly, many of the models of Earth past and present and future climate depend on estimates of these hydrological fractionation processes to understand past climates, and predict future climate change. In and of itself a single data point will not be very meaningful, but as a global data set, we can do some very powerful things.”We greatly admire the work Jonathan Wynn is doing. We know that VEEN will be the reference water, one way or another! *)Bureau International des Poids et Mesures
VEEN Walk newsletter thanking for the hard work done by all our friends. Talk the talk, walk the walk.
