(Almost) Absolute Zero: The 'Science of Cold'
(Introduction Program Video - full clip available here)

Bill Phillips, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), spoke about the science of cold temperatures to approximately 800 students, parents and teachers at Parkland Magnet Middle School for Aerospace Technology in Rockville, Md., on Jan. 9, 2008. He showed how the properties of everyday materials--from inflated balloons that become flat as Frisbees to carnations that shatter like glass--change drastically at cold temperatures.

Click the play button to watch the introductions by Benjamin OuYang, acting principal of Parkland Middle School; Jerry Weast, superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools, Md.; Senator Chris Van Hollen; and Linda Devillier, president of Devillier Communications.

The presentation was given in conjunction with the airing of the PBS NOVA program “Absolute Zero."

To read the press release accompanying this story, see http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/phillips.html.

A high resolution DVD with the full program is available free from inquiries@nist.gov.

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Date created: 03/13/08
Last updated: 03/13/08
Contact: inquiries@nist.gov