Kathy Forer on fri 11 feb 11
old
Cold kilns!
> Awesome discovery of the week: Glass melts when it gets too cold
> http://io9.com/#!5756593/awesome-discovery-of-the-week-glass-melts-when-i=
t=3D
-gets-too-cold
>=3D20
> Esther Inglis-Arkell =3DE2=3D80=3D94 Anyone who's seen enough old Sesame=
Street=3D
episodes or been to enough Renaissance Fairs knows that when glass
> gets hot enough, it turns to liquid. Applied heat pumps energy into the s=
o=3D
lid pieces of glass, getting their molecules jiggling. As the heat dissipat=
e=3D
s, the glass becomes cool and solidifies again.
>=3D20
>=3D20
> Most of the time, not many interesting things happen once a substance get=
s=3D
below the temperature required for solification. Its atoms are bound to on=
e=3D
another, and without the indroduction of some kind of energy, they'll stay=
t=3D
hat way. Glass, it turns out, is the exception.mOnce it gets close to absol=
u=3D
te zero, it melts again.
>=3D20
> But what could make that happen? The atoms in glass chilled to near-absol=
u=3D
te zero have almost no energy, so they can't be jiggling fast enough to tea=
r=3D
apart from each other. And yet, on paper and in computer simulations, glas=
s=3D
returned to a liquid form when brought close enough to absolute zero.
>=3D20
> The wild card turned out to be quantum mechanics. Once the atoms of glass=
b=3D
ecame still enough, they stopped acting like particles and instead acted li=
k=3D
e waves. The wave-like atoms now were able to flow,mmoving through spaces t=
o=3D
o small for particles to get through. This motion, and this ability to fit =
t=3D
hrough small spaces, causes ultra-cold glass to melt into a liquid. No word=
y=3D
et if this works on the T-1000.
>=3D20
> Via Wired and Nature Physics.
> ______________________________
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