IUPAP Public Lecture – Thursday, 26th July from 19:30h – 21:00h

In the “New SI», the new version of the international metric system of measurement, which will come into effect in 2019, four of the SI base units – namely the kilogram, the ampere, the kelvin and the mole – will be redefined in terms of physical constants of nature. The new definitions will be based on fixed numerical values of the Planck constant (h), the elementary charge (e), the Boltzmann constant (k_B), and the Avogadro constant (N_A), respectively. In this public lecture, we will explain what this means and why it is important, and will offer some demonstrations as to how some of these new definitions will be put into practice.

This public lecture was developed by Professors Vanderlei Bagnato and William Phillips for the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, and is presented in connection with the 26th International Conference on Atomic Physics (ICAP 2018).  It is made possible by support from the Ignacio Cirac- Fundació Catalunya-La Pedrera Chair at ICFO and from Fundació Cellex.