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  Home > JCE Print > Journal of Chemical Education > Issues > 2001  > February  >
In the Laboratory
A Simple Laboratory Experiment for the Determination of Absolute Zero
Myung-Hoon Kim
Department of Science, Georgia Perimeter College, Dunwoody Campus, Dunwoody, GA 30338

Michelle Song Kim
Roswell High School, Roswell, GA 30075

Suw-Young Ly
Department of Fine Chemistry, Seoul National University of Technology, Seoul 139-743, Korea

Cover
February 2001
Vol. 78 No. 2
p. 238
Abstract
A novel method that evaluates absolute zero was developed. It employs a remarkably simple and inexpensive apparatus and is based on the extrapolation of the volume of a given amount of dry air to zero volume after a volume of air trapped inside a 10-mL graduated cylinder is measured at various temperatures. This method of determining absolute zero is new in the sense that it utilizes reported values of the vapor pressure of water at various temperatures to extract the volume of dry air from that of wet air. A set of 10 measured values ranged from -263.10 to -287.90 °C with an average value and standard deviation of 277.86 ± 7.35 °C. This result is notably better than results from other methods of extrapolation to zero volume, which typically yield a standard deviation of ±20 °C.

See Letter re: this article.
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*  Contents JCE2001p0238.doc (MS Word 97, Windows); JCE2001p0238.wb3 (Quattro Pro 7.0, Windows)
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More Information
*  Citation
 Kim, Myung-Hoon; Kim, Michelle Song; Ly, Suw-Young. J. Chem. Educ. 2001 78 238.
*  Keywords
 Gases; Introductory / High School Chemistry; Laboratory Instruction; Physical Properties; Statistics / Data Analysis
*  History
 Created:
Last Updated:		 December 22, 2000
August 31, 2005
Link to Letter added (April 2004).
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