0

A meter is, by definition, a specific fraction (1/299792458) of the distance light travels in a vacuum in one second. How accurately do we know how long this is? In principle, it's exactly defined, but if I had a stick that was our best guess of however long a meter is, what would be the bounds for how much over/under that stick was vs an actual meter? (e.g. is it 1 part in $10^{13}$ or...?)

There have been several questions here about measuring the length of a meter but I've been unable to find anything addressing the error in how well we can measure the length of a meter.

Qmechanic
  • 201,751
ramcdougal
  • 101
  • 1
    The more money you spend on a meter stick, the closer to one meter it's likely to be. The theoretical maximum for this is set by the fact that counting oscillations of cesium measures a second to one part in 9,192,631,770. – Connor Behan Dec 28 '22 at 02:41
  • Whatever expensive method you'll use - you will always be 1 $\text{Schnitzel}m$ behind. As for the serious part,- it's about asking how well we can measure length at all. Then answer would be about $1~\text{Planck length} = 10^{-35}m.$ (at least theoretically.) – Agnius Vasiliauskas Dec 28 '22 at 08:36

0 Answers0