Assignment 1 | Low Temperature and

Superconductivity | SSP 4453 | The Race of

Absolute Zero




Name : Nadhrah bt Murad
Program : 4 SSZ
I/C No. : 910723-06-5100
Matric No. : AS 100097
Lecturer : Dr Zuhairi
1) Dewar invented a thermal insulated container to carry out his research for example,
immersing rubber ball into liquis oxygen and scientists, to this day, still call it a Dewar
flask.

2) Permanent gases such as oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen would not liquefy, no matter how
much pressure be applied but Van der Waals finally explained why these gases were not
liquefying.


3) By estimating the size of molecules and the forces between them, he showed that to
liquefy these gases using pressure, they each had to be cooled below a critical
temperature.
4) By applying pressure on the first gas, and releasing it into a cooling coil submerged in a
coolant, it liquefies. When this liquefied gas enters the next vessel, it becomes the coolant
for the second gas in the chain.
5) When the next gas is pressurized and passes through the inner coil, it liquefies and is at
an even lower temperature. The second liquid goes on to cool the next gas and so on.
6) Step by step, the liquefied gases become colder and colder. Each one is used to lower the
temperature of the next gas sufficiently for it to liquefy. In the final stage, where
hydrogen gas is cooled, the idea was to put it under enormous pressure, 180 times
atmospheric pressure, and then suddenly release it through a valve.
7) This would trigger a massive drop in temperature, sufficient to turn hydrogen gas into
liquid hydrogen at minus-252 degrees, just 21 degrees above absolute zero.
8) Liquid helium was produced by Onnes, the Nobel prize winner for reaching minus-268
degrees Celsius, just five degrees above absolute zero.

9) He also invented a new word for a new phenomenon called superconductivity which how
materials conduct electricity at very low temperatures. They observed, in a sample of
mercury, that at around four degrees above absolute zero, all resistance to the flow of
electricity abruptly vanished.

10) In the 1930s, another strange phenomenon was observed at even lower temperatures.
This rapidly evaporating liquid helium cools until, at two degrees above absolute zero, a
dramatic transformation takes place.


11) Suddenly the bubbling stops and that the surface of the liquid helium is completely still.
The temperature is actually being lowered even further now, but nothing in particular is
happening. Well, this is really one of the great phenomena in 20th century physics. The
liquid helium had turned into a superfluid which displays some really odd properties.
12) Superfluid helium can do things we might have believed impossible. It appears to defy
gravity. A thin film can climb walls and escape its container. This is because a superfluid
has zero viscosity.

13) It can even produce a frictionless fountain, one that never stops flowing. Superfluidity
and superconductivity were baffling concepts for scientists. New, radical theories were
needed to explain them.

14) In the 1920s, quantum theory was emerging as the best hope of understanding these
strange phenomena. Its central idea was that atoms do not always behave like individual
particles, sometimes they merge together and behave like waves. They can also be
particles and waves at the same time.

15) Einstein predicted that, on reaching extremely low temperatures, just a hair above
absolute zero, it might be possible to produce a new state of matter that followed
quantum rules.

16) It would not be a solid or liquid or gas. It was given a name almost as strange as its
properties, a Bose-Einstein condensate.

17) Under certain circumstances, if you cool atoms far enough, to extremely low
temperatures, they undergo a very strange transformation; they undergo an identity crisis.

18) At very low temperatures, the size of these packets gets longer and longer and longer.
And then suddenly, if you get them cold enough, they start overlapping.

19) Hydrogen such a great atom to use because it has light mass. That means that the atoms
will condense at a higher temperature than other atoms would.

20) The atoms interact with each other very, very weakly. All the signals seem to be pointing
to the fact that hydrogen was the atom for getting to Bose-Einstein condensation.