At the new NIST Center for Automotive Lightweighting (NCAL), workloads are fraught with stress and strain—all to help the auto industry take a heavy load off future cars and light trucks.

'Pssst! Hey kid, ya wanna be a metrologist?"..."Uh, what's a metrologist?"... "Ya get paid to measure stuff."..."Sounds kinda boring." So it goes at colleges and universities all across the United States.

“So what’s the weather gonna do today?” I am sure that we have all been asked that after answering the first question (about what we do for a living) with: “Metrology.”