Buyers guide features NIST Data product. (General Developments).The lead article in the annual Buyer's Guide of the American Institute of Physics The American Institute of Physics (AIP) is a professional body representing American physicists and publishing physics related journals. It was founded in 1931. The aims of the organization are: "promoting the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics and its features five pages of values of the fundamental physical constants, such as the speed of light, the Newtonian constant of gravitation new·to·ni·an constant of gravitation n. Abbr. G See gravitational constant. , the Planck constant, the fine-structure constant, and energy-unit conversion factors. The guide was distributed as a supplement to the August issue of Physics Today, a monthly publication with a circulation of about 123 000 worldwide. The numbers published in the tables were obtained from the 1998 CODATA CODATA Committee On Data for Science & Technology CODATA Committee on Data for Science and Technology least-squares adjustment of their values carried out in the Fundamental Constants Data Center at NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology, Washington, DC, www.nist.gov) The standards-defining agency of the U.S. government, formerly the National Bureau of Standards. It is one of three agencies that fall under the Technology Administration (www.technology. in 1999. Other publications, such as the CRC (Cyclical Redundancy Checking) An error checking technique used to ensure the accuracy of transmitting digital data. The transmitted messages are divided into predetermined lengths which, used as dividends, are divided by a fixed divisor. Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, also quote the values obtained at NIST. Values of the constants can be found on the Web site at http://physics.nist.gov/constants. This site averages well over 100 000 downloads per month from outside of NIST. The Fundamental Constants Data Center also distributes wallet card and page-sized tables of values of the constants. These may be obtained from NIST at (301) 975-NIST (6478). CONTACT: Peter Mohr, (301) 975-3217; peter.mohr@nist.gov. |
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