Greg,

Your elitist attitude is off base here.  I find it interesting that you’re unable to express, in
your own words, what the difference is between Type “A” and “B.”  So far, it seems, all you’ve
done is repeat heresy from a blogger.  Choosing to belittle people instead of discussing the
validity of a stated view does little for the discussion.  Your posting suggests choosing
differently establishes one to be of diminished capacity and not worthy of your presumed
excellency.  Well, that surely straightened me out, lest I befall not getting crowned with the
“inner” group.

Using your listed references, Type “A” uncertainty is direct knowledge from a known set of
measurements made by the party defining the Type “A” uncertainty.  Whereas, Type “B” uncertainty
is the lack of having direct knowledge and thus relying on other data collected from sources
other than yourself.  This encompasses information published from outside sources such as the
manufacturer’s specifications and even unsubstantiated and un-quantified experience, no matter
how valid.

The difference is either knowing for sure or assuming what you’re told is correct.  This only
applies to the person who is anointing the declared uncertainty.  The customer will always fall
under Type “B,” by definition, as he has no way of getting to Type “A.”  If the customer did have
a way of getting to Type “A” directly, then he would not need external services because he would
have direct knowledge.  Yes !  That is deceptively simple.  Perhaps all that math sprinkled all
over those reports masked the simple answer.

Well, my friend, while you’re gloating over that $500 steak dinner in a fancy restaurant, I think
I will enjoy a Teriyaki Chicken rice bowl at Jack-In-The-Box.

Bill....WB6BNQ

p.s.  By the way you had the Type of Type regarding the 3458A backwards in a previous email.

gbusg wrote:

In message 4E40C959.9E83674D@cox.net, WB6BNQ writes:

Bill, your dumb attitude is off base here.

Calling a particular kind of calibration "BS" because you don't
understand who and where it is useful, labels you as a dumb loud-mouth.

That you can't be bothered to look up things you don't understand,
but instead demand that Greg explains such basic concepts as
type A and B errors for you attests to lack of respect for other
peoples time.

And your silly dismissal of that concept, because you still don't
understand it after he provided you with links should disqualify
you from membership of this list.

Greg, through no accident, knows what he is talking about, and you
clearly have no knowledge that allows you to belittle his knowledge.

Please shut up Bill.

--
Poul-Henning Kamp      | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk@FreeBSD.ORG        | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer      | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

Guys,

Please could we all cool this down a bit - this isn't the right place for personal attacks.

Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: volt-nuts-bounces@febo.com [mailto:volt-nuts-bounces@febo.com] On Behalf Of Poul-Henning Kamp
Sent: 09 August 2011 08:07
To: Discussion of precise voltage measurement
Subject: Re: [volt-nuts] HP 3458A

In message 4E40C959.9E83674D@cox.net, WB6BNQ writes:

Bill, your dumb attitude is off base here.

Calling a particular kind of calibration "BS" because you don't understand who and where it is useful, labels you as a dumb loud-mouth.

That you can't be bothered to look up things you don't understand, but instead demand that Greg explains such basic concepts as type A and B errors for you attests to lack of respect for other peoples time.

And your silly dismissal of that concept, because you still don't understand it after he provided you with links should disqualify you from membership of this list.

Greg, through no accident, knows what he is talking about, and you clearly have no knowledge that allows you to belittle his knowledge.

Please shut up Bill.

--
Poul-Henning Kamp      | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk@FreeBSD.ORG        | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer      | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

volt-nuts mailing list -- volt-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volt-nuts
and follow the instructions there.

Geez Poul,

I must say I am surprised that after carefully describing my position twice, you
still failed to understand the direction I was coming from.  Whether you agree
with me is immaterial.

However, if you go back and re-read what I wrote you will see that I DID NOT call
the “kind of calibration” BS.  For the third and last time; I was calling the
“NEED” as BS under certain conditions.  No matter, you are entitled to your
opinion.

As for Greg’s time ?  Really ?  I guess everyone else’s time is unimportant.  It
is his choice to comment here.  Your argument about his time or rather my lack of
respect for his time is not persuasive.

As for asking a question, well, usually it is to solicit a perspective from the
party asked.  Their response is informative, as it was in this case.  So the
question served its purpose.  Your view is equally informative, thank you.

Bill....WB6BNQ

Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

I too.  But to raise a skeptics eye, the fundamentals of design is
one of material chemistry and requires a different skill set.

From NIST papers, a JJ would require IC style fabrication, in order
to get the sandwich of super and nonsuperconducting material to the
right dimensions.  Building a simple transistor would be an exercise
for the JJ, and since Lilienfeld's FET, from 1925 to Shockley in
1949, DIY transistors have only recently been attempted and if
successful, are far inferior in capability than any 20c 2n2222 you
can get at Radio Shack.  It suggests to me the success rate of
getting high tolerance layers are fairly slim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephson_Effect

Looking even at the venerable work at time nuts, folks maintain
purchase standards, not hand build from raw materials, then most of
the discussion is product maintenance and calibration.

At volt nuts, most of the discussions of DIY volt center around
purchasing and maintaining surplus Fluke standards or similar zener
or band gap style reference, and maintaining them too.

This suggests that a volt nuts JJ would likely be when someone
produces a JJ in a box that, like a Cs or Rb clock, still requires
substantial upkeep and maintenance just as the surplus clocks are
maintained by the time nutters, or Fluke standards maintained here.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2007/12/gallery_time_hackers?slide=9&slideView=10

A realistic possibility is awaiting when salvaged 'high temperature'
N2 cooled SQUID devices are available and design a JJ around it.

At 07:06 PM 8/8/2011, Chuck Harris wrote:

Sincerely,

Marv Gozum
Philadelphia, PA

Seem like the ambient temp on this discussion has pulled the standard
out of calibration ...

At 05:24 AM 8/9/2011, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

Sincerely,

Marv Gozum
Philadelphia, PA

In message 6.2.5.6.2.20110809070749.04f33918@jefferson.edu, "Marvin E. Gozum"
writes:

The one thing I have never sat down and tried to calculate, is if
there is any reason in a high-temp superconductor JJ standard or
if the increase in thermal noise will make it a pointless exercise.

The reason I wonder is that the present standards have a very low
per "cell" voltage and therefore operates with thousands of cells
in series to get to 10V.

One way to counter that, would be to increase the stimulation
frequency from the current ~75GHz into the optical regime, since
(at least as far as I understand it) the voltage per cell is
proprotional with the stimulation frequency.

Then it starts to get interesting:  A frequency stabilized semiconductor
laser (like in the CSAC) hitting a peltier-stabilized super-conductor.

If that is even possible, it would be considerably more amateur
friendly than liquid Helium and 75GHz waveguides.

--
Poul-Henning Kamp      | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk@FreeBSD.ORG        | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer      | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

It is the conversation about JJ's that I wanted to stimulate.  I think
each and every one of us would like to have a JJ standard to feed and
nurture, just like the time-nuts all want C-beams, or H-masers.

Standard cells are nice, but just not very satisfying, being stable,
but always wrong in ways we cannot predict.  Without access to a real
standards lab, we simply cannot find anything resembling a standard
volt from our standard cells.

Today, a bog ordinary EE student, at any engineering college, can get
just about any chip he wants made using the facilities of this-or-that
fab, using the MOSIS, and other interchange standards.  If we knew
enough about what we needed in our JJ array, could we too get them made
for a not too painful price?

And remember, the first guy that did this most probably relied more on
his tenacity in building the JJ than he did in the fab finesse of an
intel, or motorola.

I truly like the idea of an optically pumped peltier stabilized JJ.
With something like that, we could at least calculate how the
voltage we have created relates to the JJ that defines the volt.

-Chuck Harris

Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

I have a nice little vacuum deposition system that is capable of doing
just that sort of thing... the masks would be the major hurdle to cross.

College kids use the same sorts of systems to make their own photocells,
and organic LED's as a lab exercise.

-Chuck Harris

Marvin E. Gozum wrote: