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Questions:
1. Visit the following URL: What is absolute zero?
A. According to this website, what is the definition of "absolute
zero"?
The temperature in an object or a material that is cooled, a
point is eventually reached at which all oscillations are the
slowest they can possibly be is absolute zero.
B. Why is the Kelvin scale especially helpful when studying absolute
zero?
Kelvin scale is helpful when studying absolute zero because
this scale uses the same temperature steps as the Celsius
scale, but is shifted downward. On this scale, water freezes
at 273 K and boils at 373 K. Only on the Kelvin temperature
scale does absolute zero actually fall at 0 K.
C. What is the value of absolute zero on the Kelvin scale? The
Celsius scale and the Fahrenheit scale?
The value of absolute zero on the Kelvin scale falls at 0 K,
on Fahrenheit scale is at -459 Fahrenheit, on the Celsius
scale, absolute zero corresponds to a temperature of -273
Celsius.
2. Visit the following URL: Physlink.com Absolute Zero or Ask a Scientist:
Absolute Zero
A. According to this website, what type of experiments led to the
idea of absolute zero?
The first, and simplest, demonstration of the existence of an
'absolute zero' temperature was found in the behavior of gas
pressure vs. temperature. If the pressure of an enclosed gas on a
vertical axis is plotted against its temperature on the horizontal
scale, we get a straight line slanting upward to the right. That
means that increasing the temperature results in increased
pressure.
5. Now that you have studied the concept of absolute zero, do you think this
temperature will ever be reached? Explain your answer.
No. The coldest temperatures ever to be reached have been in making Bose-Einstein
condensates (tiny clumps of super-cold atoms) which requires cooling to something like 200
Nano-kelvins -- mere billionths of degrees above absolute zero.
But to go all the way to zero implies complete lack of particle energy. According to the principles
of quantum mechanics, there must always be some activity representing energy and therefore a
temperature above absolute zero. For example, electron-positron pairs may be created out of
vacuum.
"Physicists acknowledge they can never reach the coldest conceivable temperature, known as
absolute zero and long ago calculated to be minus 459.67F. To physicists, temperature is a
measure of how fast atoms are moving, a reflection of their energyand absolute zero is the
point at which there is absolutely no heat energy remaining to be extracted from a substance."
According to scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. MIT "currently
holds the recordat least according to Guinness World Records 2008for lowest temperature:
810 trillionths of a degree F above absolute zero. Ketterle and his colleagues accomplished that
feat in 2003 while working with a cloudabout a thousandth of an inch acrossof sodium
molecules trapped in place by magnets."