Adam Savage Has an Epiphany About the Science of Measurement

One of my favorite things on Adam Savage’s Tested channel is when he answers viewers’ questions, or even better yet, when he just enthusiastically riffs on a subject.

In this video, Adam was compelled to turn the camera on and share when he had a real ah-ha moment about the nature of precision measurement and the tools we use to try and achieve accuracy in measuring. As he says in the video, “all measurement is a compromise of circumstance” and “there’s no such thing as an actual measurement.” Watch the video to unpack these ideas further.

Over the course of the video, he talks about ceramic and metal reference gauge blocks and other extremely high-precision measuring tools.


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