– Terminology: What Are We Talking About?
Use of reference materials

Current normative documents state that a reference material (RM) is a material that meets the definition in VIM 5.13: a Reference Material (RM) is a material that is sufficiently homogeneous and stable with respect to specified properties, and that has been prepared to be suitable for its intended use in measurement or for the examination of qualitative properties.

This definition differs somewhat from that given in ISO Guide 30 (§ 2.1), according to which an RM is a material or substance for which one or more property values are sufficiently homogeneous and well-defined to allow...