How do you obtain absolute zero?

Answer 1

Essentially, you can't. At least no one has been able to yet. Absolute zero was extrapolated to be 0 K (273.15 C) by using a volume to temperature ratio at a fixed pressure and extrapolating to zero volume. While people have gotten very close to absolute zero, no one has yet accomplished it due to the fact that the molecules or atoms must have no energy and therefore no movement beyond very small quantum mechanical movements. Hope this helped!

Answer 2

You cannot in the real world because it is messy. You cannot even do so theoretically because of quantum effects. (Because the quantum world is... messy.)

Getting close is possible though. You cool the sample first with nitrogen, then helium. After helium does all it can, you catch the sample in a magnetic "bottle" with an open end. What you want is evaporation, just like water in a glass left out. Some of the atoms will at any moment have a greater share of the energy in the bottle than others and a few will exit through the open end of the "bottle" leaving gradually lower energy atoms in it. You can reduce the size of the bottle as this happenstance decreases, but there is a limit to that due to your equipment capabilities. But you are clever and realize that some of the atoms STILL have more than their "share" of energy at any given moment and shine a laser beam through the "bottle" at just the right frequency (energy) to give any atom hit a boost. The ones with a lower than average share will still be stuck inside the "bottle" and emit a photon thereby dropping back to the original (or if carefully chosen, actually an even lower energy) level while some of the higher than average energy atoms will exit the bottle taking that excess energy with them.

But eventually, your equipment will end your gains and you publish a, hopefully, new record. We continue in this apparently pointless search because people like records, scientists need the experience working out the ideas and equipment, we better what we know and when someone has a new idea, it is added into a polished approach rather than one too crude to use it (after all, magnetic bottles and lasers were new once) and, finally, because at some point short of absolute 0, we might find some interesting and unexpected properties of matter. Or confirm theoretical predictions giving us better directions to follow for many other applications.

Added:

That's funny about the exams. Let's see, hmmm... perhaps have an affair with your wife's sister and mother... and father... and tell everyone on Christmas morning? I bet there will be enough cooling available from the look in their eyes to reach very near absolute zero...

Answer 3

You cannot technically obtain absolute zero. You can progressively get close to it, but you will always be slightly above absolute zero - at least this is with our current technology and thinking.

Answer 4

Get every question on the test wrong.

Seriously: you can't because that means a stop to all molecular motion. If this ever happens to the universe, gravitational forces will probably initiate the "big crunch" of the universe.

Answer 5

well you cant but if you were trying you would remove all the heat energy from a system. i dont know how you would do that on such a small precise scale but you would probably start similar to the process in a refrigerator/freezer and perfect it with better, more efficient materials.

Answer 6

technically you can't achieve absolute zero because there are always heat being remove

Answer 7

So far it's a theoretical temperature, essentially it's not possible. But who knows what people will do in the future....

Answer 8

i think with nitrogen.. but they havent reached absolute zero yet... i believe that theyve only reached 0.687 degrees.

Answer 9

This phenomenon has never been achieved - not in a laboratory or anywhere else that has been observed.

Answer 10

like everyone said, you cant get it, but the way they get close is with lasers