changed the official definition of this measure

The kilo that most people use daily is no longer what it was up to now. As of Monday, May 20, the new official definitions of the kilogram, as well as the kelvin, amp and mol, came into effect worldwide.

The main change is that from this moment all the units of the international system will be defined according to different constants of nature. This implies that they will no longer be compared with a "model" of physical object, nor obtained through unrealistic theoretical experiments, as was the case until now for some of the interstell them.

As the engineer Héctor Laiz, head of metrology and quality at the National Institute of Metrology, told the newspaper Perfil, "From 1889 to the present day, the kilogram (the unit of mbad) was defined by an iridium platinum alloy cylinder stored at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in France. Now, after a process that has taken two decades of expert discussion, we will have a new definition of the kilogram that will be based on badigning a fixed numerical value to the Planck constant ".

Although they seem to be purely theoretical problems, they are changes that have application and importance in reality. In this regard, the specialist noted that "the new system will allow us to carry out controls of the master units through experiments linking, for example, the measurement of mbad to physical constants, values ​​that remain identical to any moment and in all places ""

In the case of kilograms, all countries had to base their measurements on the only "standard" artefact stored in France, which posed problems of logistics but also of reliability of measurements. The main problem with this comparison was that it was not possible to determine its stability because it interacted with the environment. In fact, according to experts, it is possible that he has won or even lost a few atoms of its surface and that the original French weight could have varied from about 50 micrograms during its long century of use.

With the new system, this will no longer happen because "model" units are bound to constants. In this way, it will be possible to control the standard units by means of experiments linking, for example, the measurement of mbad to physical constants, values ​​which remain the same at all times.

Although it is a measure used to measure the weight of people – one of the variables for knowing the state of health – it is important to keep in mind that this will have no influence in this domain. The impact of the measure will focus on the scientific field and manufacturers of high precision instruments.

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