| Description |
1 online resource (streaming video file) (52 min. 4 sec.) ; 315736328 bytes |
| Summary |
Air-conditioning, refrigeration, and superconductivity are just some of the ways technology has put cold to use. But what is cold, how do you achieve it and how cold can it get? Absolute Zero explores these and other facets of the frigid in two one-hour programs.The two-part special follows the quest for cold from the unlikely father of air-conditioning, the court magician of King James I of England in the 17th century, to today's scientists pioneering super fast computing in the quantum chill near absolute zero - the ultimate extreme cold at minus 273.15C. Along the way, viewers learn about the invention of thermometers, the origin of the ice business in 19th century New England, Clarence Birdseye's fishing trip that led to the invention of frozen food and a couple of cold-inspired scientific races towards absolute zero that ended in Nobel Prizes. Absolute Zero brings the history of this frosty subject to life with historical recreations of great moments in low temperature research and interviews with noted historians and scientists, including Simon Schaffer of the University of Cambridge and Nobel laureates Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman of the University of Colorado at Boulder and Wolfgang Ketterle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The first part of the documentary opens in the 1600's when the nature of cold and even heat was a complete mystery. Are they different phenomena or aspects of some unified feature of nature? Are they added to a substance or qualities of the substance itself? The experiments that settled these questions helped stoke the Industrial Revolution, which exploited such fundamental insights as that heat always flows from hot to cold. (From the US, in English) (Documentary Series) |
| Event |
Broadcast 2010-02-20 at 17:30:00 |
| Notes |
Classification: G |
| Subject |
Air conditioning -- Technological innovations.
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Cold -- Physiological effect.
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Cold.
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Ice -- Research.
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Low temperature research.
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| Form |
Streaming video
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| Author |
Arsenault, Raymond, contributor
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Carter, Jim, cast
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Chang, Hasok, contributor
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Picard, Dennis, contributor
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Schaffer, Simon, contributor
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Szydlo, Andrew, contributor
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