Exploring the diversity of dark energy dynamics, we discover a calibration relation, a uniform stretching of the amplitude of the equation of state time variation with scale factor. This defines homogeneous families of dark energy physics. The calibration factor has a close relation to the standard time variation parameter wa, and we show that the new, calibrated wa describes observables, i.e. distance and Hubble parameter as a function of redshift, typically to an accuracy level of 10 −3 . We discuss implications for figures of merit for dark energy science programs.