John Zwak, Sr. Metrology Engineer and Jim Burns, President participated in the ASTM Committee sessions in November. John is the Secretary for Committee E20 on Temperature Measurement, and Jim is the Chairman for Subcommittee E20.04.01 on Thermocouple testing where John is also the Secretary.
This is not only an opportunity to bring Burns’ 47 years of experience to the conversation but to learn a lot from the many other brilliant folks in attendance.
Speaking of brilliant! As part of the E20 meeting, Greg Strouse from NIST offered a presentation on an amazing technology as a potential replacement for a Standard Platinum Resistance Thermometer, SPRT.
The technology, “Sapphire Whispering Gallery“, has been around for years. Classic applications leverage the phenomenon of total internal reflection of energy waves, for the development of Oscillators to meet the demands for precision signal generation and processing. In these applications, the device is generally temperature compensated to reduce temp effects. This Review of SWG-mode Oscillators gives a pretty technical, but interesting overview of the technology.
Mr. Strouse and his friends at NIST are exploring a concept that leverages the predictable temperature sensitivity of the Sapphire Whispering Gallery Thermometer, (SWGT) to accurately measure temperature with uncertainties of < 10mK.
Awesome stuff! We here at Burns will be watch how this technology develops. Check back with us to see what additional insights are revealed by the great work at NIST.
Post a comment! I’d love to hear your thoughts on this interesting SWGT idea.
Chuck
Posted on December 28th, 2007 at 4:19 pm:
I was in attendance at the ASTM E20 sessions in November as well. And I will testify to the fact that there are some brilliant things presented and discussed there.
And I want to thank Jim and John from Burns Engineering for their important and dedicated work on the committee.