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Absolute Zero
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Program Overview
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NOVA brings the history of cold to life with historical recreations
of great moments in low-temperature research and interviews with
historians and scientists to reveal how civilization has been
profoundly affected by the mastery of cold.
Hour one of the program (The Conquest of Cold):
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reports on the pioneering experiments done by Robert Boyle to
understand what cold was.
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presents how the first temperature scales were determined by
Daniel Fahrenheit and Anders Celsius.
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recounts how Guillaume Amontons first came to speculate that
cold had an absolute limit.
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explains how scientists came to understand what heat and cold
actually were, including the incorrect caloric theory proposed
by Antoine Lavoisier.
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reports on the first industrialization of cold through ice
sales.
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details how experiments on the steam engine led to the
development of artificial refrigeration.
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profiles how Clarence Birdseye and Willis Carrier harnessed the
cold to create frozen foods and air conditioning.
Hour two of the program (The Race for Absolute Zero):
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features the race between nineteenth-century scientists James
Dewar and Heike Kamerlingh Onnes to become the first to liquefy
hydrogen, the last of the so-called permanent gases.
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notes how unexpected events in the study of cold led to new
areas of research, including superconductivity and superfluids.
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details how Albert Einstein came to predict that a new state of
matter—one that behaved according to quantum mechanical
rules—could be produced at temperatures just above
absolute zero.
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shows how particles would change into overlapping waves in this
state of matter, known as the Bose-Einstein condensate.
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details the race among scientists to create this condensate.
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describes how one scientist found a way to slow down the speed
of light.
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reports on research being done to develop quantum computers.
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shows how far down the scale scientists have traveled and
explains why reaching absolute zero is not possible.
Taping Rights: Can be used up to one year after program is
recorded off the air.
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