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Metrology--An Experiment Where Industry And Education Meet, R. B. Hastings

Journal of the Minnesota Academy of Science

This paper describes a project in which students worked in close cooperation with both the physics department of Macalester College and the gage block laboratory of the Continental Machine Company, manufacturers of ,precision gage blocks. Brief descriptions, including drawings, are given of both the interferometer and the constant temperature laboratory in which all measurements were taken. This constant temperature laboratory is set with precision at those two temperatures between which the average coefficient of linear expansion of a gage block is to be determined. Many such readings were taken and computations of the coefficient of expansion were made. Comparison of …