The National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, offers a striking catalog of reference materials that includes peanut butter, New Jersey soil, domestic sludge, Lake Michigan fish tissue, and Spam. These materials turn out to illuminate the fascinating process by which measurement standards are defined in terms of fundamental physical constants and then handed down by NIST as artifacts that anyone can use to calibrate a bathroom scale or detect impurities in molybdenum oxide.

In this episode Jon Bruner interviews Steven Choquette, director of NIST's Office of Reference Materials, about the 1,300 materials that NIST's scientists produce and certify, and about the future of the program in biological materials.

Visit http://bit.ly/nistsrm for full episode notes and links. And visit https://www.thedigitalfactory.com to learn more about The Digital Factory Conference, returning to Boston on May 7, 2019. Register to join CEOs, CTOs, and CIOs who are transforming their businesses through manufacturing.