April 21, 2018: Illuminated Site of the Week: A Standard Page By Any Measure

If you're old enough to remember the TV show Liar's Club, you may recall they wheeled out weird objects, provenance unknown, for celebrities to tout and contestants to determine the purpose of. Carrying on this proud, obscure tradition, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) periodically produces such an item and asks if anyone knows what in the world it is. Assuming it comes from this world at all may be presumptuous, and there may be nothing standard about what any given item measures. Does it power this? Detect that? Protect against the other? Take a gander to see if you can help. And if you can . . . just how is it you came by this knowledge?

-- Suggested by Steve Jackson