Revolutionary White Reflectance Standard for Metrology

Colleagues know I can be cynical and skeptical about some of the work coming out of HP Labs. Finally something to be proud of:


Revolutionary White Reflectance Standard for Metrology: "Figure 1. Pressed halon (left) compared to the proposed new white standard (right)."

...

"Once the standard has reached the end of its useful lifetime, it must be disposed of. This is one of the key strengths of this standard in that the disposal is achieved by ingestion. There may be variation in the exact number of standards that can be disposed of at once, but current experiments by the authors show that up to five white standards can easily be disposed of at once while other sources have shown that this number could be as high as seven. This is fairly close to the 51 gram manufacturer recommended serving size. The targets are suitable for use in compost piles or can be given to children."