Science Museum’s Lates

The Science Museum will be marking the redefinition of the Kilogram with a special Lates in partnership with the National Physics Laboratory (NPL). The redefinition of the Kilogram goes into effect on 20 May, World Metrology Day and sees us move away from using a physical object as a point of reference for scientific measurement, to make units of measurement more robust for use in today’s world.

Measure of All Things Lates explores the role of measurement in trade, travel and time and the importance of a universal measuring system.

Discover the work of horologists over the ages in The Clockmakers’ Museum, learn about how to tune an atomic clock and find out what the redefinition of the Kilogram means for physicists.

Listen to comedy group Large Stand-Up Collider explore the humorous side of the Kilogram, meet metrologists and discover the story of the kibble balance and find out how new technology is changing the way we measure our world.

All this and much more, including the chance to go on a virtual journey that is out of this world in Space Descent VR with Tim Peake and get down at our famous intergalactic silent disco.

Measure of All Things Lates is at the Science Museum on Wednesday 29 May from 18.45 – 22.00. For more information and to book free tickets visit sciencemuseum.org.uk/see-and-do/lates.

Media Partner: The Telegraph

The Lates Highlights:

Why do we measure everything?

Metrologist Richard Brown explains how billions of measurements are used every day to support industry, trade and health.

Le Grand K

Experience performances and readings by artists and writers from the Royal College of Art in response to the recent redefinition of the value of the kilogram.

Measurement parlour games

Play with the National Physics Laboratory’s collection of SI-based parlour games and discover how machines precisely and accurately measure physical quantities.

The history of measurement

Join curators to discover which units of measurement were used in the past, from Elizabethan weights to General Roy’s standard scale before going on a tour of The Clockmakers’ Museum and getting up close with incredible examples of horological history.

The magnificent seven

Bring physics to life and get to grips with the seven SI base units. Can you perfectly ‘tune’ an atomic clock or make an acoustic resonance thermometry system work?

The kibble balance

Metrologists Ian Robinson and Perdi Williams explore how due to advances in physics the mass scale reliant on a single artefact is being replaced by a more scalable definition based on universal fundamental constants.

Making time

Come along and see clock and watchmakers at work, using tools and materials that have remained largely unchanged for the last 500 years.

Large Stand-Up Collider

Join geek comedy group Large Stand-Up Collider for a night of measurement inspired frivolity as they explore whether size in physics really does matter.

Bot challenges

Try and win a prize by stacking SI base units in plastic robot form before using high-precision laser interferometry to measure your bot.

Harnessing time

Top chronologist Anne Curtis will take you back in time to uncover the story of the most accurate timepieces ever created.