let's order strange things from NIST! first up is this jar of reference peanut butter. it's only $881 per jar!
but it's no ordinary peanut butter. it's got a MSDS! and a datasheet!
ok technically it is only $881 per *three* jars.
but why would you want this peanut butter? it comes with certified amounts of particular substances in it, so it's good for calibrating equipment used in the food industry to measure regular ol' grocery store peanut butter.
but NIST has a lot more than just peanut butter. oh my. you won't believe the goodies i've seen!
here, have some breakfast cereal! it comes in a pill bottle.
it'll go well with your...uhhh...whale blubber
no, what we need is some milk. you can pick fortified or unfortified milk but sorry, it's contaminated. oh also, it's human.
all right, that's not very appetizing. let's have some meat homogenate instead. actually that's probably just wet cat food 😂
couldn't find a photo of it, but maybe we should just eat "typical diet"
after eating all of that reference material i really... uhh... 💩
yes, this is powdered sewage.
there's other urban waste products too, like this Urban Dust.
or how about some THC? yes, from marijuana. however, it's been peed out by someone and is freeze dried. how'd they collect this stuff anyway?
perhaps they have a Reference Joint, similar to this standard cigarette.
some of these substances are a bit cruder than others.
huh, it's a standard bullet and a standard shell casing
you can also buy dirt.
huh, this must be the "health food" section of the NIST store. it's only slightly more expensive than Whole Foods
anyway, feel free to browse the store yourself. nist.gov/srm
i printed a new panel insert that has two BNC sockets on it (the original probes would have had captive cables)
the tricky part is that this oscilloscope has a 333K ohm input impedance instead of 1M like umm every other scope on the planet. fortunately someone designed a little conversion circuit...
in honor of Sim Wong Hoo, here's a quick historical review of the Sound Blaster! 🧵
but first we have to go back to their first sound card, the Creative Music System from 1987. (image credit: Bratgoul on Wikipedia)
this card has some special "CMS-301" chips. if you peel back the sticker, they have had their top marks removed. they're actually SAA1099 synthesizer chips made by Philips. Creative wrote music composition software for musicians on the PC.