World’s Most Perfect Spheres

Craft & Design Science

I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

View more articles by Sean Michael Ragan

@seanragan

July 14th, 2009July 14th, 2016 58

These silicon spheres, manufactured by metrologists at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) as part of efforts to alleviate dependence on the International Prototype Kilogram, have properties that are as close to truly exact as measurable properties are likely to be for a long time to come: They weigh 1.0000000 kilograms, are smooth to the nearest 0.0000000003 meter, and are round to within 0.000000050 meters. One of them is even monoisotopic.