Hacker Remix

NIST Standard Reference Materials Catalog [pdf]

25 points by NaOH 11 hours ago | 8 comments

jcrawfordor 7 hours ago

Here's the good stuff: https://www.lipomed-usa.com/en/cannabinoide

Lipomed and a few other companies actually sell all kinds of psychoactives and narcotics as reference standards for toxicology, but the market for cannabis references got a lot larger since most states require laboratory assay of cannabis products. I think gas chromatography by flame ionization is the typical method but you have to calibrate your equipment against some really top-shelf stuff.

cbm-vic-20 7 hours ago

Tom Scott did a video about this a few years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvJzi0BXcGI

Derek Muller of Veritasium also had an episode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esQyYGezS7c

tonetegeatinst 5 hours ago

Worded if they have standards for the pure sand used in wafer production, or if wafers are considered a standard? Thoughts?

rsfern 3 hours ago

Usually standard reference materials are just regular materials that have been measured really precisely and carefully. So you’re paying for the certificate of analysis and the tracking of lot numbers and such for wherever the material was sourced

rdtsc 5 hours ago

Besides famous NIST peanut butter they also have:

* Bovine Liver 20g

* Dry Cat Food 5 pouches x 10g each

* Urban Dust 2g

* Domestic Sludge 40g

Ichthypresbyter 3 hours ago

And cigarettes, for a very specific reason.

Fire safety testing for furniture upholstery involves testing that it resists being ignited by a lit cigarette. The problem is that since the test protocol was written, states (starting with New York) have passed laws requiring cigarettes to be less able to ignite furniture! So upholstery materials that would fail the test with a cigarette from the 1970s, when the standard was written, might now pass it.

In response, NIST developed a standard cigarette which burns like one from 1992 to ensure consistency in these tests.

(There is also a standard cigarette used to calibrate measurement of the ignition strength of cigarettes)

https://www.nist.gov/fire/history/standard-reference-cigaret...

toomuchtodo 2 hours ago

The first part is odd, because it feels like consistency is not important. The industry might not need to put as much resources into fire retardants if cigarettes are getting less flammable over time, and I assume cigarettes have a lifetime you can assume they will exist for by vintage.

Static reference cigarette does make sense though.