Do You Know What Calibration Is?

In simple non-specialized words, calibration is the act of checking and adjusting a device to a standard scale.

At this point there are several notions which need to be explained in order to fully understand this process.

In the physical sciences, measurement is the activity of obtaining and comparing physical characteristics of real-world objects and events.

All the aforementioned issues highlight the need of a certain act of checking and adjusting to a certain standards that is commonly known as calibration.

The system of calibration is reliable and it overcomes many issues of the past when the measuring instruments were more intuitive and they lacked accuracy. The measuring devices may be employed in safety-critical fields such as medical applications or automotive and aerospace ones.

The importance of calibration can be demonstrated by real examples. Imagine a very simple and common sense situation: the thermometer used by a patient is faulty, it does not correctly show the body temperature. This could turn into a very problematic state of facts, as the diagnosis might depend on that measuring device which does not comply with the standard scale. The importance of the problem is made clear by consideration of the vast differences in appearance between results given by calibrated and uncalibrated systems.

Successful calibration has to be consistent and systematic, considering the complexity of instruments which may require that only key functions be identified and calibrated. Calibration fulfills two objectives: it determines accuracy of the measured data and it provides traceability to the measurement, ensuring a better resolution.

Other examples of devices which may be calibrated are: the computer monitor or display which is calibrated by means of color calibration; weighing scales that weigh railroad cars are calibrated by a scale test car device, musical instruments are calibrated, which, in music, means tuning, that is adjusting the instrument into playing the right pitch, etc. All these devices are "fixed" so that they meet the standard requirements in terms of features and characteristics.

The quality of a calibration is often accompanied by a traceable uncertainty statement to a stated confidence level. This is evaluated through careful uncertainty analysis to determine the device to reach the standard scale.