The World's Official Kilogram Is Losing Weight and That Might Screw the Metric System [Measurements]

We've long known that there were some issues with France's 'Le Grand K', the international prototype for what a kilogram really is. Made in 1879 from platinum and iridium alloy, it is the perfect standard for what a kilogram weighs. The problem is, it's losing weight.

Mental Floss takes a look at what the lost weight of the official kilogram means and the flaws of using a physical standard for such important purposes and it's all so fascinating. For example, scientists are scrambling to redefine what a kilogram is, like how they changed the definition of a meter from once being a metal rod stored next to 'Le Grand K' to the distance light travels in a vacuum during 1/299,792,458 of a second.

But why does it matter whether or not 'Le Grand K' is the perfect kilogram? Because standards need to be, well, standardized. Mental Floss says, the little changes can add up to be a big problem. Specifically:

The kilogram is also used as a building block in other measurements. The joule, for instance, is the amount of energy required to move a one-kilogram weight one meter. The candela, a measure of the brightness of light, is measured in joules per second.

These links mean that if the kilogram is flawed, so are the joule and candela, which could eventually cause problems in an array of industries, particularly in technology. As microchips process more information at higher speeds, even tiny deviations will lead to catastrophes. Le Grand K's unreliability "will start to be noticeable in the next decade or two in the electronics industry," warns NIST physicist Richard Steiner.

Read more about the flawed perfect kilogram at Mental Floss. [Mental Floss]

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Why the Official Pictures of US Olympic Athletes Sucked So Much [Photography]

Olympic athletes are the closest thing we have to Greek Gods—they're beautiful, sculpted and highly dedicated, it's pretty hard to make them all look bad. Unfortunately for Joe Klamar, his official photographs of US Olympic Athletes did just that. They were awful.

When the pictures came out, people thought it was some sort of sick and twisted joke. It couldn't be real, right? Why would a news agency like Getty publish the pictures that had Olympic athletes under bad lighting, shoddy backgrounds, awkward poses and odd composition? They're going to represent our country in London and we wanted them to look like the equivalent of terrible Craigslist photo snapped in a creepy guy's basement? It made no sense. Here's what Klamar himself said about these pictures:

"I was under the impression that I was going to be photographing athletes on a stage or during press conference where I would take their headshots for our archives," he explained. "I really had no idea that there would be a possibility for setting up a studio." It was the first time AFP had been invited to participate in the U.S. Olympic Committee's Media Summit, which was held this year, in May, at a Hilton Hotel in Dallas.

Joe had come armed with two cameras and three lenses (17-35, 70-200 and 300), plus one flash and a 12-inch laptop. To his horror, he saw upon arriving that his colleagues from other news agencies and media organizations had set up studio booths with professional lights, backdrops and prop assistants. "It was very embarrassing to find out that I wouldn't be able to take advantage of a studio," Joe told us by email.

A press officer from the U.S. Olympic Committee took pity on Joe, and helped him convince another photographer to share booth space.

It was a case of being completely unprepared for the situation, something we hope our Olympic athletes won't be. I guess it's motivation, then? [AFP via PetaPixel]

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