There’s a little cylinder that sits in a locked vault in Severes, France. It was made in 1889 from a platinum and irridum alloy, and is 1.54 inches high and 1.54 inches in diameter.
It’s a kilogram.
Perhaps more precisely, it represents a kilogram. The little cylinder was made to represent a kilogram so as to standardize units of measure for weight. That way I couldn’t scoop up a pile of stones and call it a kilogram (well, I could, but I’d be wrong). By setting a material standard, a kilogram is a kilogram is a kilogram.
Unfortunately, or maybe just mysteriously, the kilogram is getting lighter.
Strangely, that little cylinder is ever so slightly lighter than the average of dozens of copies that were made at the same time, with the same material, and kept under the same conditions. For some reason, either the standard (the kilogram) is getting lighter, or the copies are getting heavier. The difference is about 50 micrograms.
I’m sure there’s plenty of women that take this as good news. Without changing their diet, without altering their excercise routines, and without expensive surgery, every single woman (and man, for that matter) on the planet weighs less (in kilograms) today than yesterday. Goodbye, Atkins diet.
With 6.7 billion people in the world, each losing 50 micrograms, that’s a loss of 335 kilograms. Or, about the weight of one man and one woman combined.
Of course, those people had to have disappeared in a country that uses metric units of measure.