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At 0 Kelvin, or -273.15 °C (-459.67 °F), no heat energy remains. At absolute zero, particles stop moving all together. That's pretty cold! So what if we experienced absolute zero for five seconds? Would the world shut down? And how fast would you freeze to death?
What is the lowest temperature possible?
What is the lowest temperature possible?
PBS Nova Absolute Zero PBS NOVA Documentary
PBS Nova Absolute Zero PBS NOVA Documentary
Ben Miller experiments with super-fluid helium - Horizon: What is One Degree? - BBC Two
Ben Miller experiments with super-fluid helium - Horizon: What is One Degree? - BBC Two
Tyler DeWitt: Absolute Zero
Tyler DeWitt: Absolute Zero
Absolute zero is the coldest possible temperature. We'll look at how to find absolute zero with temperature and volume, and how it relates to the Kelvin temperature scale. We use absolute zero with Charles Law and gases for physics and chemistry.
What is the highest temperature possible?
What is the highest temperature possible?
LAB (virtual): Absolute Zero
LAB (virtual): Absolute Zero
How did scientists determine absolute zero (the bottom of the absolute temperature scale)?
How did scientists determine absolute zero (the bottom of the absolute temperature scale)?
An open-end manometer is a device used to measure the gas pressure of a sample of gas. Its operation is built on the idea that gases push. And they can push with enough force to move a column of mercury along a U-tube. An open-end manometer is one in which one end of the U-tube is open to the surrounding atmosphere, allowing the atmospheric gases to push on one side of the mercury column while the gas sample pushes on the opposite end.
PhET Virtual Lab: Gas Properties
PhET Virtual Lab: Gas Properties
Determination of Absolute Zero
Determination of Absolute Zero
Average of -275.64
Average of -275.64
Absolute zero is the lowest possible temperature, such that nothing could be colder and no heat energy remains in the material being examined. At this temperature, the molecules stop moving, with minimal or no vibrational motion, retaining only quantum mechanical, zero-point energy-induced particle motion.
1655 One of the first to discuss the possibility of an absolute minimal temperature was Robert Boyle.
He is best known for defining the inverse relationship between the pressure and volume of a gas—what is now known as Boyle’s Law.
Who came up with the concept of absolute zero?
As long ago as the 17th century, the French physicist Guillaume Amontons noted the existence of absolute zero. Since temperature is defined by the thermal motion of a substance, there is a lower limit. It is the state at which thermal motion (the movement of atoms and molecules) is low and energy becomes minimal.
1702 Guillaume Amontons - His instrument indicated temperatures by the height at which a certain mass of air sustained a column of mercury—the volume, or "spring" of the air varying with temperature. Amontons therefore argued that the zero of his thermometer would be that temperature at which the spring of the air was reduced to nothing.
Even as early as the 1700s, there were inklings of the concept of an absolute zero. French physicist Guillaume Amontons did some of the earliest work while studying what he perceived as the springiness of air. He noticed that when a gas is cooled down, it pushes back on a liquid with less force than when it is warm. He reasoned that perhaps there was a temperature so low that air would lose all its springiness and that this would represent a physical limit to cold.
Amonton's Law states that the pressure of an ideal gas varies directly with the absolute temperature when the volume of the sample is held constant.
In 1779 Joseph Lambert proposed a definition for absolute zero on the temperature scale that was based on the straight-line relationship between the temperature and pressure of a gas. He defined absolute zero as the temperature at which the pressure of a gas becomes zero when a plot of pressure versus temperature for a gas is extrapolated.
In 1848, the Scottish-Irish physicist William Thomson (a.k.a Lord Kelvin) became interested in the idea of “infinite cold” and made attempts to calculate it. He extended Amontons' work, developing what he called an “absolute” temperature scale that would apply to all substances. He set absolute zero as 0 on his scale, getting rid of the unwieldy negative numbers. In 1848, he published a paper, On an Absolute Thermometric Scale, that stated that this absolute zero was, in fact, -273 degrees Celsius. (It is now set at -273.15 degrees Celsius.)
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