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Four pictures appear below for your consideration. Without blaming anyone in particular for this measurement miff I submit that the lesson to be learned is to question EVERYTHING -ESPECIALLY if the U.S. Government is to be depended on at any level as a factor in your judgement of what the truth of any matter is. I don't blame the government for the mis-measure below since I have no faith in them anyway. I just wonder what they are doing with all our tax money if, in the end, a simple student ruler cannot be trusted.
Let's say you wanted to buy your kid a school ruler and you went down to the local supermarket and bought one of two available. I bought both. Let's say you gave one of these rulers to your kid and they used it at school. Simple enough right? Did you really give them what you thought you were giving them? After all somebody is making sure that weights and measures in America are dependable - right? I checked out the NIST site and the Department of Commerce under which they are a division. I found even more departments - maybe one of those departments/divisions is to blame. I didn't bother linking the websites since the pictures below are worth thousands of their website assurances.
Take a look specifically the lengths of the rulers - the purpose for which they are designed. Which is right? A girl I asked laughed and told me "take the cheaper one!"
Just so you can determine for yourself if I can depend on either school ruler I've put a live round from a Kalashnikov in the picture because I wanted to provide a standard for you to judge measurement accuracy by.
By the way, I didn't know the camera was that horrible either.
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UPDATE JULY 12, 2009 UPDATE JUNE 11, 2009 BRIAN BROUGHT THIS UP PINEWOOD DERBY RULES
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UPDATE JUNE 8, 2009 Panel finds lax oversight re war profiteers
UPDATE JUNE 8, 2009 NASA has money to burn, maybe they can make rulers for the kids
UPDATE JUNE 10, 2009 Read this UK article - still an irrelevant point?
UPDATE JUNE 11, 2009 BRIAN BROUGHT THIS UP PINEWOOD DERBY RULES
UPDATE JULY 20, 2009 Graeme MacQueen takes NIST apart brick by brick
