Prize for excellent measurements

Call for the Helmholtz Prize 2024

19-Jul-2023 - Anyone who has conducted precision measurements within the scope of a scientific project or assignment should pay close attention: You are eligible to apply for the Helmholtz Prize. It is Europe’s most prestigious award in metrology — the science of exact measurement — and will be awarded in two ...

International Research Team Develops Method to Characterize Nanomaterials

06-Apr-2023 - Researchers from Paderborn University, the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRiM),Italy’s national metrology institute, the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, and the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), National Metrology Institute of Germany, have studied sequential infiltration ...

World's first optical atomic clock with highly charged ions

Scientists of the QUEST Institute at PTB have realized and evaluated a new type of optical atomic clock

08-Nov-2022 - Optical atomic clocks are the most accurate measuring instruments ever built and are becoming key tools for basic and applied research, for example to test the constancy of natural constants or for height measurements in geodesy. Now, researchers at the QUEST Institute at the ...

Quantum logic spectroscopy unlocks potential of highly charged ions

31-Jan-2020 - Scientists from the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) and the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) have carried out pioneering optical measurements of highly charged ions with unprecedented precision. To do this, they isolated a single Ar¹³⁺ ion from an extremely hot plasma ...

Redefining the Limits of Measurement Accuracy

Researchers develop more sensitive quantum sensors

03-Jul-2019 - For centuries, humans have been expanding their understanding of the world through more and more precise measurement of light and matter. Today, quantum sensors achieve extremely accurate results. An example of this is the development of atomic clocks, which are expected to neither gain nor lose ...

Power to the constants!

On World Metrology Day what defines a kilogram, an ampere and all the other units will change fundamentally

15-May-2019 - If you come across someone who can tell you by heart and without cheating what a kilogram is after 20 May 2019, beware! It is probably a particular kind of scientist, a metrologist, who is still overly enthusiastic about the fundamental change experienced by the International System of Units, the ...

Don't Give the Slightest Chance to Toxic Elements in Medicinal Products

New high-accuracy reference solutions for the SI-traceable measurement

27-Mar-2018 - Lead, cadmium, mercury, and arsenic do not belong in medicinal products. International requirements for the quality of medicines have therefore become more stringent and introduced new control requirements. Hence, it makes sense to use high-accuracy reference solutions with defined contents of ...

Measurement of the dynamic mechanical properties of viscous materials

DIN standard for the determination of the tip radius and the probing force of stylus instruments developed

07-Jun-2016 - In microsystems metallic components are increasingly being replaced by those from low-cost polymers. For the thickness measurement of polymers, there is now the DIN standard 32567 available, which describes both, optical and tactile surface measuring methods for the precise measurement of the ...

A deep look into a single molecule

10-Feb-2016 - A German research group has demonstrated the first implementation of a non-destructive state detection technique for molecular ions. Piet Schmidt and his colleagues from the QUEST-Institute at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) observed changes in the rotational state of a trapped ...

A big step towards the redefinition of the kelvin

PTB scientists determine a new value of the Boltzmann constant

28-Sep-2011 - Metrologists are measurement artists who are very precise – in the case of the Boltzmann constant up to the sixth decimal place. Whoever is able to determine it very exactly will cause a small revolution in the field of worldwide temperature measurement: The temperature unit will then no longer ...