Why standards - Essay Example

? and Section # of Engineering Standards What is a standard and why are they so important? Where do standards get used and how vast are their applications? These are the questions addressed in this paper, with the immeasurable importance illustrated against various examples where standards are employed and how they provide benefit to the users that encounter them. Although this paper will focus most on standards in reference to technical scientific requirements and standards, they are of course important in general too, and have extremely widespread importance and relevance. Introduction A standard in its definitive sense is ‘a required or agreed level of quality or attainment’ (Merriam-Webster). In other words, it is a published set of guidelines that defines a certain criteria that an object, measurement, procedure or otherwise should fit into. It set out rules that act as definitions or references for anything in particular and are expected to be enacted exactly as they are without change or adjustment. Standards are generally enforced not as rigid rules to make things more complicated but rather to simplify things when viewing from a bigger picture. Standards allow all involved in something, whether it is a researcher looking to publish a bit of information, or a student wishing to learn something, or a manufacturer aiming to sell a product, or a consumer wishing to buy one, to effectively and exactly explain what they are offering or understanding, without ambiguity or confusion (Brownell, 1917). Where these standards are used and how they are used is what this paper will now begin to examine. Consider the standards employed by a manufacturing industry. To a certain measurable level as a standard reference point is very important for them for a great number of reasons. Without manufacturing norms, products would have little to no mobility. Each country and manufacturer would be working on their own terms of reference, thereby making it difficult for a consumer. A typical consumer will buy products from different manufacturers or will use services from different companies, and will ultimately have them all at use in one place. It would therefore be redundant and a hassle to have one particular product in one specific room only and be unable to use anything else with it, as they would not be standardized to work with each other. Furthermore, if you consider using the product or service in another country, unless the plugs, sockets, voltage supply required, power consumed etc were not standardized, it would be impossible to import or export a product for any widespread use. In terms of science though, standards have an importance so immense that without them science would not only be unable to progress, rather they would face setbacks so severe in the form of chaos and confusion that it would ultimately do more damage than good. One main reason for this is that science is not localized. It is universally applicable, universally required, universally used and therefore, universally researched upon and worked with. When there is a subsidized standard in place, a scientist in Muscat can pick up the thesis of a scientist in Russia, build upon it, research it further and produce a paper with terms and references of a specific format so that tomorrow, when someone in yet another country wishes to learn from it, they will do so without confusion and conflict. Communicating on a standardized subject is far easier than having to communicate on a relative subject where first you would have to explain your terms of perspective and then get your point across. Luckily, some standards have been in use for so long and so widespread that they have become second nature to use and alternates are not even considered. For example, when illustrating the size of an object, without a standard form of measurement, we would have to employ words like small and big, which are relative terms. To say something is very small could mean a very large number of things, depending on what you compare its size to. The Empire State building is absolutely miniscule compared to the Milky Way but compared to a fisherman’s hut, it’s huge. To say it is an inch, a foot, a mile or a kilometer is far easier, far more convenient and of course far better understood. Inches, feet, miles and kilometers are units of measurements which take rise from another very important set of standards: SI Units. The International System of Units, or the Systeme international d'unites in French, are a standardized system of seven basic measuring units, from which all other units are basically derived. The system is now almost universally adapted, with only a few countries being exception in the sense of employing it as their basic means of measurement, but even those countries recognize the units with ease and are aware of their general standards. Because of this system, variations in standards between different countries are greatly eliminated, bringing about cohesion and consistency. Furthermore, this system of measurement allows the smallest villages and the largest cities to communicate with each other in a scientific sense where they face no lack of communication. The seven base standard units include Kilogram to define mass, meter to define length, second to define time, Ampere to define current, Kelvin to define temperature, candela to define light intensity and mole to define the amount of a substance. All further units are derived from these basic units making all scientific measurements against one exact reference. This is very important when you realize how widely used these units are. When moving from one country to another, there is a certain amount of luggage that a passenger can carry. Without understanding what a kilogram is, to be told that only 60 kilograms of weight is allowed would be futile. But a kilogram all over the planet has one universal definition, i.e. the mass of the international prototype of a kilogram: the weight of exactly one liter of water. Consider the importance of standards in telecommunication, the branch of science that deals with the transmission of information from one point to another. Data is sent through a sender and received through a receiver but unless the receiver can clearly interpret what the sender is sending, we would be wrong to refer to it as communication (ASA, 1989). Naturally, even though humans access and send this data, it is read by machines, who can only be programmed to run a specific task, not improvise. Therefore, there needs to be a standardized set of rules and procedures through which the data is formatted, sent and received, allowing the machines to effectively read what is being transmitted. The internet works over the similar principal. A user sitting at home cannot differentiate between where a certain website’s origins lie. For that user, every website is expected to be accessed the same as any other website, and for that the internet needs to ensure certain standards, which are called Protocols. Websites are created on networks that then communicate with other networks, transferring the information across. This can only be done if a certain network understands the format of the information it is intercepting, which can again only be done if network operators, website generators etc. all follow the same standard procedure of operation. In the branches of science and engineering related more to biology and chemistry, standards are just as relevant. Of course measurement of quantities using standardized unit is also important, as already discussed, but of greater relevance in this case are standardized conditions. In chemistry the terms ‘standard conditions’ mean 25 degrees Celsius of temperature and 1 A.T.M of atmospheric pressure. Under these conditions varying behaviors and properties or elements or molecules are studied, such as the standard enthalpy change of combustion (the amount of heat energy required to completely burn 1 mole of an element or molecule) or the standard enthalpy change of formation (the amount of heat energy required to produce 1 mole of a certain molecule). This not only makes it easier to reference these properties, but also allows of easy comparison between elements as there is one single reference point. Again, as explained earlier, this also makes research and study easier. In Biology there are standardized test environments where studies and experiment are carried out, again, ensuring the same level of testing on a specific specimen, ensuring its value and guaranteeing it against a certain point of reference for any person who wishes to obtain it, regardless of the origin of it. Another important application of standardized reference points are the RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) guidelines, also known as the DRI (Dietary Reference Intake), issues by the Institute of Medicine. It is a set of guidelines that illustrate what amount of a particular nutrient should be included in our daily diet, such as fats, carbohydrates, certain minerals, vitamins, etc. They are very useful as using these guidelines cafeteria lunches are decided for children, new foods that aim to optimize the intake of these ratios are studied and health officials can objectively study and recommend certain foods (Reese & Watson, 2000). Furthermore, all manufactured food products are generally issued with their RDA value printed on them, making it easier for consumers to decide what products to buy and how to consume them. Again, as obviously illustrated, this makes it easy to compare two different foods, even if they aren’t from the same manufacturer, or indeed even from the same region of manufacturing. Standards are also used in terms of standardized tests. For example in material standard testing, where tests such as the Rockwell Hardness Test and Brinnel Hardness Test determine the hardness of a material, or its ability to resist deformation. Other tests include stress-strain testing, tensile testing and many other such tests, all of which determine properties of a material which allow an engineer to determine which material is most suited for a particular sort of product. There are certain regulatory bodies that set and ensure these standards. As they are generally used internationally, these regulatory bodies are also international. Examples of these bodies include the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), the British Standards Institution (BSI), Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and countless others, with the most prominent one being the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) which deals with standards relevant to vast number of fields, including machine testing, hygiene conditions, and manufacturing standards. From all these examples, it is evident that standards are basically needed for one main thing: coherence. To allow the easy, seamless transgression of information across borders, where any and all information can be usefully used and understood. In a world where countries are more and more just different viewpoints on the same subjects of relevance, where one thing affects us all globally and where it’s almost near to never that something is confined within a particular geographical border because it only affects the people of that area, it is necessary that standard be applied where everyone can work on something or access certain information, use it their requirements and not worry about how it will integrate with the rest of the world or the information they already have (Sethi, 2003). It also makes it easier to study, research and then present that research. Quite simply put, if there were to be no standards, it would be like communicating in French with someone who only understood English. Or it would be endless everyday dilemmas like buying a shirt for someone, hoping it would fit but having no way of being sure. Standards therefore are not only important in making life less complicated in terms of everyday activities but far more important on the more advanced level of science and other international requirements. Indeed they are so vested in our everyday life that we fail to notice how frequently they are employed but without standards our world wouldn’t be a world – it would just be a cluster of disconnected borders. References Brownell, W. C. Standards 1917 Khan, W. Raouf, A. Standards for Engineering Design and Manufacturing. CRC Press 2005 Kvernelan, K. Metric Standards for Worldwide Manufacturing. ASME Press (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) (July 31, 2007) Rees, N. & Watson, D. International standards for food safety. Aspen Publishers 2000 Sethi, P. Setting global standards: guidelines for creating codes of conduct in Multinational corporations. John Wiley and Sons 2003 ‘American standards: Manufacturing standards applying to broadcast receivers ‘ American Standards Association (ASA) 1989 Contributions of Women Scientists in the U.S. to the Development of Recommended Dietary Allowances - Harper 133 (11): 3698 - Journal of Nutrition 1998 The International System of Units (SI) (8 ed.). International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM). 2006. Read More