The "Discovery" of Absolute Zero

This is a chart to show what happens when we chill out. More specifically, what happens to a gas.

Everyone knows what happens when it gets cold.....things SHRINK (men would know more about this).

It has to do with vibration (don't get excited, girls).

Heat = energy and the less heat an object has, the less it's vibration.

So the size decreases.

If you are talking gas (Ethel Merman go home) then for the same amount of gas, if you cool it, the container you need to keep it in will have to be smaller.

There was once a guy named Charles, who figured this out, but he did not stop there.
He said to himself, what if, the gas did not go to a liquid, bur instead stayed as a gas? He called it an "Ideal Gas".

The buckshot (whoops, Upshot) was that he continued the picture right back to zero volume ( as per the picture) and he found out that no matter WHAT gas was used, they all ended up at zero volume at EXACTLY the same "temperature".

It was from then on called "Absolute Zero". and the number is 273.16 degrees Celsius below the freezing point of water.

Nothing has ever been cooled further since.

This whole issue is couched in quantum mechanics, although at the time, it wasn't even thought of. The reason why quantum mechanics comes into it is down to Heisenberg again - the Uncertainly Principle. If something stops moving, then you can say where it is (Trivial, I know, but hang on). This is completely forbidden by quantum mechanics. Moving targets are a must!

So stuff need to keep moving. and if you are at absolute zero, you stop. Therefore, you cannot get there (thermodynamics again).

Physics is wonderful because basically all the stuff around us is related to everything else. It's only when you study really hard do you get to know (and wonder at) how it all fits together.

This is the be-all and end-all of why the subject is so dear to me. You can call me a "bore" but at least I know the answers to the questions we have all asked our parents as kids.

Water, or di-hydrogen oxide, is the strangest of all, and blatantly refuses to conform....!

Why does ice float?