Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

In a recent discussions of standards of measurement I made
the mistake of picking up on something someone else had said
and using it myself as if it was true.

It appears that I shouldn't have been so trusting.  A little
Web surfing shows that it's probably not the rate of decay
of a cesium atom that the standard second is based on.  It
seems to be some other behavior of a cesium atom.

One example is at
http://www.boston.com/globe/search/stories/nobel/1989/1989i.html

   [...] cesium or atomic clock, which uses highly
   regular oscillations of parts of the cesium atom to
   determine the length of a second.

But this is a side issue.  It has no effect on the validity
of other statements I've made in that discussion.