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Category: Constants fixed by definition

3 articles

The list below is believed complete, though membership – like everything here – is subject to revision.

  • Le Grand K – A platinum-iridium cylinder that was the kilogram from 1889 to 2019, and so weighed exactly one kilogram by definition. Nobody could check it.
  • The Millikan creep – Millikan's charge of the electron was 0.6 per cent low, and every value published after it climbed towards the truth by small steps for decades.
  • The speed of light – Measured for three centuries, wrong by four times its own error bar for twenty years, then fixed by vote in 1983. It can no longer be measured.

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