Warp schrieb:

>   According to wikipedia, one liter of pure water at 4 degrees celsius (the
> standard temperature for measuring SI units) is 0.9999720 kilograms.

That's because the /initial/ definition of the kilogram was one liter of 
pure water at /zero/ degrees celsius.

>   If they changed the definition of kilogram back to its original form, the
> change would be less than 0.003% from the currently accepted value. Would
> that be a huge catastrophe?

There would be no change at all, because they'd define it as something 
along the lines of:

"1 kilogram is the mass of 1.000028 liters of pure water at 4 degrees 
celsius"

And yes, a /change/ of 0.003% would be a /tremendous/ catastrophe. Note 
that they're currently worried about /imprecisions/ of less than 100 
micrograms (0,0000001%).

See also 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram#Importance_of_the_kilogram for all 
the units of measurement that would be affected by such a change.

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