Adam Savage's Epiphany on the Science of Measurement! 

Thank you Adam for bringing attention to the science of metrology. We hope you’re able to visit us and tour our facility one day. I’m pretty sure you’d enjoy the calibration lab!

Adam, thank you for not editing out any goofs, repetitions or dead air. Being able to listen along at a human pace makes these tool tips unusually watchable amongst the breathless TikTok madness that is most of RU-vid.

I'm a QC Inspector for the aerospace, defense, nuclear/powe-gen, and med device industry. I routinely inspect things that are measured to the micron and less, mostly spinal medical implants and parts used to perform angioplasty...on infants. I get small. In my 20 years of working small, I have never seen anyone so passionate and enamored of process as myself, until now. Also, your quote "All measurement is a compromise or circumstances." Is beautiful and I will be printing and framing it for my office (quoting you of course), come Monday. Thank you for shedding a little light on something I take very seriously. I could tell you some really cool stories and circumstances surrounding the processes and environments required to make measurements even smaller than those you discussed. Also, Mitutoyo, accept no substitutes.

I love how unscripted this is. It feels like a really good conversation with a professor at the end of the day after class.

Adam at 37:34, "I am like a bull in a china shop." I'm surprised Adam still uses this phrase since he knows that bulls avoid knocking over china while in a china shop since he tested this on Mythbusters!

"This morning I woke up thinking about gauge blocks..." Adam Savage is an international treasure.

I love the “im like a bull in a china shop” line from Adam & then the silent pause & realization that he has already Busted that myth. Still one of my favorite episodes ever & biggest surprises from the show.

I'm as of recently a Quality Analyst at an engine factory. I don't get to use it yet, but the measurement labs and equipment are terrifying and awe-inspiring. Terrifying in how unbelievably difficult it is to measure things this accurately, and we're doing it. I see lots of Mitutoyo's stuff as well as Starrett, lots of granite everywhere, and the really fancy stuff like the gauge blocks are locked up in a special lab that's squeaky clean, in stark contrast to the common filth of the factory. It just sparks a sense of reverence, Quality is the field where the philosophical and abstract are blended with the physical and concrete, that's why I love it so much.

From my time in a Cal lab I'll never forget this: "a man with a watch knows what time it is. Give him another watch and he's not so sure anymore." It's great to see a person as enthusiastic as Adam.

I'm a metrologist and I'm making this video required viewing for all the engineers I have to work with. My favorite measurement tool is a Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM). After almost 20 years of Adam teaching me new stuff, I finally know a little more about the subject than he did. Yet he still managed to explain it better than I could. Thanks, as always.

I've been a metrologist for 31 years, absolutely LOVE how much Adam brings to our science and career. Every day, tens of thousands of calibrations are done so that everything you use as a consumer is measured to the millionth of 'whatever'. Love this channel!

Been a Metrologist for 23 years. You cant imagine how awesome it is knowing that more people will know how cool and amazing the field is from this. We define reality lol.

Long live the people who possess this level of enthusiasm, for geeky things.

This video is the perfect example is why I idolize Adam.

Never thought a video about measurement would make me tear up, but here I am! This inspired a pure sense of awe and fascination about the world that we think we understand. One of my favorite quotes is, "The more I learn, the less I know." What seems like a simple question and answer becomes a constellation of variability. I find that amazing.

Adam I've been in fabricating and machine my entire working life, and am currently a quality manager at a machine shop. Thank you for being passionate about something that so many take for granted. As I was showing my wife portions of this video, and I was geeking out over it, she looked at me like she had to hurry up and go change the cats litter boxes and I was keeping her from that. I appreciate it more than you know!!! Have a fabulous day!

If there’s one thing that I like about this channel is just how improvised everything is. Most large channels are all well prepared and everything when it comes to making videos but Adam here goes out on the fly and takes it all in one take, even when it comes to asking Alexa something and then telling her to shut up or reading paperwork while the camera’s rolling. He’s a mad scientist and I love it

"Any measurement without the knowledge of uncertainty is meaningless" - Walter Lewin My favorite quote when it comes to accuracy

Very well done class Mr. Savage. I have been a QC inspector and manager for 32 years ,before retiring and helped build our companies inspection standards to today's quality. This would be a very good class for any starting inspector to watch. Good show.

Adam, I am a Journeyman Millwright for the last 15 years. Your description of the art and science of measuring things was golden. Most people don't realize how everything expands and contracts with heat or the lack thereof. A great tool for calculating this is the Coefficient of Thermal expansion which can be found in the Machinery's Handbook. A teacher I once had said that with that book alone, you could teach yourself to build most anything you wanted. Thank you for your passion and honesty with all your projects.

Probably the best Tested video I have watched. Thank you Adam! “All models are wrong, but some are useful” - British statistician George Box

The Pursuit of Precision is such a fascinating tale of human endeavor. The development of zero, base ten math, calculators (both the people and then development of machines), engineering tolerances, manufacturing tolerances... the advent of the ruler which brought on the sliderule. Surveying using gunter chains and now GPS with accuracy down to micometers. Machinist chasing zeros. Mathematicians chasing zeros. Engineers chasing zeros. It's so intertwined with human history and development that we are at a point where precision can speak the tale of human development.

Wild that I just sat here and listened to 45 mins of measurement discussion. Adam's a great teacher.

Oh! Adam! Watching you is such happiness! Seeing a person exhibit such awe, excitement, and sheer pleasure from having and sharing knowledge makes me feel all warm inside! It brings me memories of my childhood in 1950's, learning about ancient cultures & history with my father -- and again, listening to my grandson info-dump about the pharaohs & pyramids. Knowledge is power, is wonder, is joy! Keep bringing joy to our world Adam!

I truly believe Adam Savage is the only person that can say "I woke up this morning thinking about gauge blocks" and no one bats an eye.

I work in a metrology lab and I can say that I absolutely love my job! Waking up and going to work brings me joy! I also love how excited Adam is about metrology!!!

i have no practical use for any of the information presented here, but I absolutely loved every second of this video. thank you.

I quite enjoyed this. In my own career as a glass artist and working with kilns I found that the amount a given material will move when it is heated up. Generally, I was working with temperatures ranging from room temp up to around 1650 F. With glass you can fuse different sheets of glass together and they will bond, but if they have different rates of expansion then, if that difference is great enough the piece will not survive over time. If the expansion is greatly different then the piece will break on cooling down. If it is slight then it may last hours, days or months before it breaks. Then you went on to mention the expansion of the cables of the Golden Gate bridge at noon vs. dead of night. This brings me to another thing I learned early on in my kiln work. If you put a piece of steel in the kiln and take it up to 1500 F it will be just fine. It will heat up and then cool down and be pretty much the same-aside from the spalling on the surface. However, if you have it constrained, then it will bend and twist and be deformed when it cools down. The understanding I gained from my kilns and trying to build metal forms to shape glass gave me a great insight into why the Twin Towers collapsed. The burning jet fuel heated up the steel supports but because they were supporting hundreds of thousands of tons they could not expand so they buckled and once they buckled they could no longer support that vast weight. A digression from what I intended to say, which was to thank you for this discussion of measurement.

My dad was a carpenter from the age of 13 (he quit school to support his siblings) until he died at 67. In my teens (i'm mid-50s now) I worked with him off and on. When calling out measurements he used to say "cut the line" or "leave the line" it wasn't until recently that I internalized what he was telling the saw-man with that phrase. My favorite measuring tool: the foldable wooden ruler. There's just something about it that I enjoy.

My current favorite measuring instrument is my oscilloscope! A little peek into the world of quite short time periods! It turns "I push the button and it closes the circuit" into "I push the button and apparently it actually kind of rattles as it settles into being firmly connected over the course of 60 microseconds". It lets you move from measuring only steady states of electronic circuits to understanding how they change over time.

I saw a program on British TV a decade ago called " how long is a piece of string?" which explored this very fractal accuracy of measurement. Fascinating. You did a good job there, Adam.

Adam: I learned much of this well done video while working at a Fortune 50 company, putting coatings on papers and films. The critical thickness of the material we were coating, an emulsion, depended on its viscosity (some were shear thickening, some shear thinning), temperature, velocities and the coating rolls used, measured in 0.00001 runout. It was as much an enlightening experience as you just expressed. Well done, Adam.

I love how Adam goes “About the thickness of a rolling paper” to talking about measuring fractals on a coastline. You need a podcast!

When I first started machining. My biggest epiphany was wrapping my head around not only measuring but thinking of things in life you think are square. But in the machining world making blocks square is a whole different world.

This video was like 15% information and 85% Adam Savage Enthusiasm, and I enjoyed all 100% of it.

One of your best videos so far! I work with color science within the printing industry, and the more I learn the more I tend to start my answer with ”it depends” when I get a question regarding color.

For over two decades I have worked as an engineer closely with the machinists, metrologists, customer manufacturing, design and production engineers, quality departments and customer inspection. Before that I worked in a metrology lab. Almost all the machinists I deal with are literally Swiss machinists. Our normal tolerances we work with are +/- 0.001" (25 microns) with the smallest PRODUCTION tolerance I have had to work with for a multimode fiberoptic ferrule +/- 0.00025 MILLIMETERS! Accuracy and Precision are an incredibly complex subject which get exponentially more complex when you begin discussing Gage Repeatability and Reproducibility (GR&R). It is one thing to make an item once or twice for your own use but now try making 10,000+ of them for assembly and use by your customer in something like an implantable cardiac device or minimally invasive surgical component. Now you need to be able to measure not just the part but study the variations from operator to operator when making such measurements along with the variations in the measurement devices used just to determine if all parties can effectively measure the features in question. Then you can start discussing such things as gage tolerances where both you and the customer have certified Go and No Go Gages yet the product is conforming with your gage and non-conforming with the customer's simply because of variation within the allowed tolerance the gages are made to... These are the things which put me on planes to production sites and customers and keep me up at night.

I took quantum mechanics in college. We did these incredibly complex derivations and when we got to the last class, I looked my professor dead in the eye and said “we don’t know anything. These are all approximations. We made all of this up and we still don’t know.” He responded, “and now you understand.”

Thank you for this one, as a Quality Worker the fascination and sheer joy you show in this video is what I have every day in my work. Which is difficult to share, most people go glassy eyed when I start talking about quality and measuring things for work. I immediately drooled over the gage blocks, I have steel but ceramic is the gold standard and while I’ve been in quality for well over a decade I still hope to be worthy of those someday.

I absolutely loved this. The topic and vibe. It feels like I'm having fun conversation with my dad in his workshop or a college professor outside of class. The topic is so interesting to me too--it's something I'd never be able to discuss about extensively with anyone else and hearing just how Adam speaks about it brings me joy and increases my interest in the topic too

My favorite class in engineering school was uncertainty analysis... confidence and the degree of confidence, the certainty of certainty, is an amazingly useful subject, applicable in almost every imaginable area of study or thought. Not only can you calculate the things you know you're certain of, but also the things you can't be certain about, it's math-magical. Great show man 👏

I can't remember a better video on a combination of Physics, Philosophy, an appreciation of the natural world and our understanding of it, I have watched in years. The sheer excitement and enthusiasm Adam conveys spews out of the screen and envelops you. Tolerance and uncertainty are the cornerstones of every measurement as the late, great Walter Lewin used to insist. We do not get to appreciate the nuance of that in our daily lives until a great educator like Adam comes along to make you think about it. This man is a national treasure.

Hello Adam, thank you for making this simple explanation. My friends can understand been a quality control inspector for medical device companies for 35 years. Metrology is fun for me. And yes, the word you did not use the entire talk was tolerance. I think that's the word you were looking for. And we work within microns all day. I enjoy your shows immensely. Very entertaining and educational. Irregularly work within around 30 nanometers on a lot of parts I work with. Measuring cylinders precision cylinders high-speed pneumatic motors pneumatic motors turning 100,000 RPMs with aluminum tools where if you hold them too long, the plug gauge would either get stuck or wouldn't enter because of the change in diameter just from holding the part for too long and raising the temperature. One or two degrees temperature is a major factor in micro measurements. I find titanium to be one of the more thermal stable materials work with it a lot in the medical field. Thank you again. Enjoy your shows. Take care

Thank you for making this video Adam. I'm 48 years old, and have decided to take up machining after a career in electronics, and feeling "burnt out". I'm excited about machining, and have been for a couple of years from tinkering in my garage and operating a couple of CNC mills here and there. I'm recommending this video to all my classmates for the way you explained metrology and displayed most of the content we learn about metrology in the first trimester. YOU'RE AWESOME MAN!

The way Adam pull back and says "with in reason..." and just look at the camera like a stern father , pure gold. please never leave us Adam.

Endorphin rush received. Through the first 90% of the video, I was screaming "this needs a reshoot with a proper script with cutaways and tidy editing". But toward the end, I realized that Adam's pure energy and delight in the topic comes through *because of* the stream of consciousness style. So for some, a clean linear presentation might be more effective, while others will grok better with this scattershot approach. In any event, thanks for the deep dive into the philosophy of metrology!

Such an excellent video. When I started to study machining 50 years ago, I had an excellent tutor who enlightened us students. Measurement of things is an endless challenge, and continues to fascinate. Really good topic, and video. Tolerances rule !

I have spent almost 30 years in the injection molding tooling industry. I also spent nearly half that time involved in the EDM (electrical discharge machining) aspect of toolmaking. We seldom got into the tenths tolerances, but I always strived to be as accurate as possible in my setups and electrode machining. I can TOTALLY appreciate your passion for this Adam. Thank you for this video.

Your discussion about steel expansion reminded me of something a machinist friend told me. The 12-cylinder engine blocks in the WW2 Spitfires were so large, that the heat generated by milling caused the block to expand measurably. The blueprints had two sets of measurements on them. The set you used depended on which end of the block you started milling from. If something happened part way through that forced you to stop (e.g. a broken bit) the entire engine block had to be scrapped, and you started over with a new one.

Hearing Adam talk about learning guitar really hit home for me. So true, I love this channel and your work Adam!

Adam is such a fantastic human! I do coding and game development, and I’ve been having tested on in the background, and there’s a level of comradeship that were both creating something (usually from nothing) that were both going back over and changing things, seeing how it looks or works, and doing it again and again until everything works and looks mostly exactly how you want it too. Thank you for moving to RU-vid, and being even more relatable! Keep on being amazing Adam! And everyone who empathizes on any level!

I'm genuinely envious of people that call Adam friend. Having someone this passionate about anything is such a wonderful trait .

Wait until Adam discovers the concepts of Measurement Traceability and Measurement Confidence.

"The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World" is such a great book and is in my top 5 books all time.

Well.....I was really excited to see those ceramic gauge blocks because I knew how accurate they are. I was a Toolmaker for over 40 years and routinely worked to a .0001 tolerance. We used carbide gauge blocks because we were working with carbide materials. We also worked with different tool steel. So our shop temperature was maintained at 68°, allegedly. You need a grinding machine process before gauge blocks are necessary. The surface roughness is too great to measure that closely. I'm sure you understand. As an old school Tool and Die maker, that thin film of oil needed for a gauge block build up was found on the under side of our wrist.

Re-watching this again. This is one of the best videos online. Thanks, Adam.

I would _LOVE_ Adam Savage to get to experience seeing a Scanning Electron Microscope look at something on the nanometer scale if it's not something he's had the opportunity to before - because I will never forget the first time I did, and how it gives you an understanding of just how intertwined everything is. The sample we looked as was held in a vacuum sealed chamber, in another stabilized container, and those containers all have various forms of other insulation to help remove the sample from interaction with the outside environment. This allows it to be stabilized to the device and apart from as many other surfaces as possible to act as insulation against energy transfer disrupting the focus and visible output. Despite that, if you talked at all while you were in the room with that device _even just at a whisper,_ the tiny vibrations from your voice would cause movement on the display, because that miniscule audible sound energy is transferring into and through all of the interconnected solid materials, and past all of the multiple forms of insulation and stabilization, and reaching the sample you are looking at. Then the more you understand about the tolerances and just how much all of those stabilization and insulation measures reduce the amount of anything from reaching that sample, the more monumentally impressive the scale of just how tiny and interconnected everything is. In the years since, that's made learning about things like cold welding in space even more impressive because of helping me to wrap my head around details that I'd never been able to grasp before.

Adam, I love they way you don’t just explain things per point, you have a great story telling ability you marry with you explanations. It’s so much fun listening along to your journey to your main point.

I didn't know I needed this video, until now. Thank you , Adam

Adam, Thank you for what you do. I can sit and watch your videos all day long if I had time. The perspective you give as all things tools/shop/measurements relate to a deeper understanding of the world around us is truly mesmerizing to me.

As a high school science teacher and maker, I loved this dive into the weeds! The thought process of “knowing” is fascinating and using measurements is so necessary. My students have not developed the needed “eyes” to properly understand or appreciate measurements at your levels, and, honestly, to the precision that a meter stick provides.

Love it when you do these “explainer” videos. Epic. Packed with valuable lessons for not just measurement but life itself.

LOVE your enthusiasm and passion and how you explain things so un succinctly which isn't a word but it encompasses your much loved talent for going into depth with examples and lots of facts and tidbits along the way to explain something. Without that you'd have words and facts but no true understanding. Thank you for sharing your endorphin rush!

Adam, I've always dug your energy from the early Mythbuster days. But I've grown to appreciate you even more since you've been doing things on your own on RU-vid. Videos like this one make me chuckle, because as I watch you, I know this is exactly how I look to other people when I try to bring them into my world by geeking out over something which is, to them, a matter of supreme indifference. I am highly information-oriented, and so I can't help but spew out all the relevant facts/data/specifications, maybe a few amusing anecdotes from the history of whatever I'm talking about, etc. etc... And eventually I see their eyes glaze over, and realize I am just in outer space as far as they are concerned. But I'll be having the time of my life. I love teaching people, and especially teaching kids about something new. I have as strong feeling that you are the same in that regard, too. Thanks for all the great stories, builds, and other content, Adam!

10:25, not many people realise calipers have a 4th measuring surface on the outside edge of the jaw for measuring steps. Feels more sturdy to use than the depth stick when you have the space to use it

i was not, nor am i still particularly interested in metrology, but Adam's energy is intoxicating. He has a way of sharing ideas, concepts, stories etc that is extremely captivating and entertaining. A true pleasure to watch. That was really cool of Mitutoyo. It's always great to see/hear about companies that aren't just faceless entities

This one showed up in a side list, I see it’s a year after it was made, and I just brushed it as I was rolling through and it started, but it got my attention almost instantly. This is one of the longest, nerdiest, all over the place Adam Savage monologues I’ve seen, and I was sad when it ended. This was fascinating, educational, and presented with such enthusiasm it was infectious. I loved this so much. Thank You.

This is the third time I've watched this video. I am an amateur machinist and so appreciate You Tube for bringing me Tubalcain, Adam Booth and Joe Pie, and the rest... but Adams enthusiasm for the significance of the existence of Gage Blocks really resonates with me. I use a yardstick for much of what I do, but I have two vintage sets of gage blocks, they haven't been cleaned or certified since the 1980's but just having them makes me feel a part of the group who understands.

I absolutely love this! The first part reminds me of something I learnt some time back on the stages of competence - when learning a new skill we all fall into one of four categories of increasing competence. It starts with being unconsciously incompetent, where you don't know what you don't know. You then move to being consciously incompetent, where you gain an understanding of what is involved and can start to do the thing, albeit poorly, and with constant attention to what you are doing. Next you become consciously competent, where you can now do the thing well as long as you pay particular attention to what you are doing. And then lastly you become unconsciously competent, and can now perform at a high level and have an intrinsic understanding of what is involved and no longer have to consciously think through what you are doing. The second part of the discussion reminded me of something that blew my mind - the engine of a Formula 1 car is seized solid at room temperature! All of the components in the engine are machined to be within tolerance only at the operating temperature of the engine, so the entire engine is heated before it can be started! And, as you mentioned with the different coefficients of thermal expansion with your gauge blocks, there are many dissimilar materials that make up the various parts of the engine and they all have to be machined for their own particular rate of expansion to work when the engine is hot - this absolutely amazes me and I'm in awe of the engineers that design and build them!

Adam, you are pointing out such important things, as you so often do. New eyes in the case of Impressionism was not merely practice in an existing field - it was adjusting the critic’s (and the western world’s) whole concept of what painting was meant to accomplish. That it wasn’t to spend countless hours hours drawing and painting create a polished representation of a traditional idea of figures in space as it had been worked out over centuries. The impressionists worked quickly to catch a momentary glimpse of how humans actually perceived the modern world. Originally, impressionist paintings looked careless, clumsy, untutored, unfinished - bad. But it wasn’t bad - it was a new kind of good. Grasping that demanded an incredible level of new learning, seeing, and understanding. Our world keeps changing and our tools change with it - we all need to continually change how we see and understand. You and your gauge blocks are helping us to understand that. Thank you! (And yeah, I’m an art historian.)

Simply Awesome my friend!! This is why I watch your videos. I need that rush of energy and the pain of deep thought. Thank you

probably one of the best explanations of what emlightment is all about

Adam, I love, love, love that you were hit by this wonderful epiphany. I’m a practicing statistician, and I can happily tell you that the whole point of statistical methodologies isn’t to measure a thing…it’s to tell you how much to trust/believe/discount/exult your measurement! Precision is relative and is endlessly battered by exogenous factors. Great episode!

I just started cnc machining a few months ago, and I’m absolutely obsessed with the constant pursuit of precision. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as making something within 1/10,000th of an inch.

I really enjoyed this and greatly appreciate your skill, enthusiasm, and attention to detail.

Thanks Adam. I’ve been really enjoying a bunch of your videos recently. This one took me right back to year 1 of my engineering degree (40 years ago). I loved the way you covered all the increasingly mind boggling concepts of metrology.

An old machinist gave me the best advice when measuring engine parts. He said " the difference between a micrometer and a fancy clamp is the standard". This statement has fundamentally changed the way I view measurements and my tools.

This was something that bothered me from a young age. Whenever I was asked to measure things I always tried my best to minimise inaccuracy. I'm a mechanical engineer now and after studying metrology my questions were finally answered. I feel like you did a very good job explaining all of this!

Adam's enthusiasm for everything he does on this channel makes me happy. That's what living the dream looks like.

Adam I must say that you personally inspired me as a young man who stayed glued to the science and discovery channels! I believe it was your spirit of learning and testing the unknown unapologetically. From there I set up my life to aquire all the skills I would need to be a maker myself. Although my creating journey started many years ago 23 to be exact, I still find excitement in learning and trying new things. With that said, A big thank you to you from me. Please continue to learn and teach us all for the sake of comprehension of our ever changing world.

This was like a master class on philosophy of measurement, I super-enjoyed it!

The next tool you should buy (or borrow) is an 'optical profilometer' so you can measure your gauge blocks. You will find that even the best ones have surface roughness and non-planar surfaces at the nanometer scale. When you start getting serious about measurement, you can obtain an optical/laser micrometer and laser scanner, from a company like Faro or Micro-Epsilon. The accuracy of optical measurement is dependent on the wavelength of light and insensitive to temperature, so they are about as absolute as one can get. I love these spontaneous videos, here's to many more in the future! Cheers!!

This rings of the explanation style of a college lecture from one of my favorite professors. Such a satisfying explanation of measurement.

I will never ever have to use any of those blocks in my life, but I now have a genuine base understanding of something new and it makes me feel just as excited as you look through this whole video. Thank you very kindly sir and I hope you learn something new everyday

In college, a friend and I were discussing the progression of precision in machines. Because in order to make a precision machine, it has to be made on a less-precise machine, which itself was manufactured on an even less precise machine... Love the video.

I had kind of an epiphany when you said, “the closer you look at stuff, the harder it is to measure” and I kept thinking back to modern physics and the uncertainty principle. That concept is so unbelievably hard to have an intuition for. However, at least for me, you gave an intuition for that principle on the limits of the smallest things in the universe. It’s simply just a scaled down version of what you’re describing. The uncertainty is larger than the measurement itself.

Love this stuff and Adam's intensity. I nerd out on some of the same things. Many years ago I was a machinist making parts for the F-16 and parts for Bell Helicopter at a subcontractor. This just brings back fond memories. I've always been a stickler for accuracy.

This was eye opener, Thanks for sharing Mr Savage.

For most of this video I sat on the edge of my seat watching in horror at the UNLOCKED box of ceramic gauge blocks on the bench. Thankfully they remained there the whole video and didn't end up on the floor. I kept shouting at the screen to lock the box then Adam notices the steel block box is open and closed it but leaves the ceramics open. Oh the humanity!

Adam, thank you for this excellent introduction to metrology. This video is a mandatory watch for the students. Even the non edited confusion about what is a nanometer is a valuable lesson: it’s a great skill to have a feeling for when something is wrong, even if one does not know how to fix it yet, then take the necessary steps to learn, then come back and get it right. Love it all 45min.

I work as a pharmaceutical chemist and have tons of respect for our metrology department that maintains our analytical equipment. Their attention to detail is inspiring, i like to watch them work whenever they visit. thanks for sharing your perspective, it was fun to listen to!

I’m a biochemist, just graduated in may; one of my final courses was physical chemistry II. This class taught me the principals of empirical measurements and the faults in which it brings. Many points made in that class were theoretical; or limited to the relationships between two materials within the lab. This video on the other hand is a great example of how much trouble one can get into when measuring at a great specificity. Precision can only be accurate if all aspects of, not only the material, but also its environment is accounted for. Many thanks for your knowledge and time!

Started reading "The Beginning of Infinity" last week. In the early chapter, "Closer to Reality", it observes that "It may seem strange that scientific instruments bring us closer to reality when in purely physical terms they only ever separate us further from it. But we observe nothing directly anyway. All observation in theory laden".

I love this! I'm a CNC operator, and I'm going to share this with my machinist friends. One of whom is the retired inspector from where I work.

This is by far the best description of enlightenment and the goal and difficulties of enlightenment that I've ever heard.

By far my favorite video of his. Very enjoyable! Love his excitement. ❤️

Since many people have already mentioned it, I am going to amplify "The Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy". Adam talks about using a surface plate; that book talks about how you make the surface plate in the first place. I've always been astounded by the idea that you can start with non-precision materials and create precision via the proper technique. Jon

I absolutely love this rant. I work in a clean room that makes metrology optics, so precision microrules, dot grids, reticles. One of the first things I had to learn was at what point do I stop looking for defects because as you increase your magnification you will find more and more defects. And speaking on metrology, one of my favorite measurement tools to use is a white-light interferometer that we use to measure features with down to nanometer precision. It's incredible!!

When i first saw this done it blew my mind... i though it was magnetic until i saw it done with ceramic blocks. I absolutely LOVE his excitement to explain this. Its so pure, like a little kid trying to show you his favorite toy. This whole video just had me smiling ear to ear.

This is more inspiring and philosophical than it is instructional. I loved it. Thank-you Adam!!