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Mike Serfas
Mike Serfas
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I ran into a fascinating little fact I didn't remember hearing before: if liquid H2 is cooled below 60 K, its heat capacity looks like that of a monoatomic gas. It simply doesn't have enough thermal energy to rotate, due to quantum effects.

Inevitably I find myself wondering how that works... in particular, does this mean you could take a container of liquid hydrogen at 14K or so and purify out molecules where the hydrogens are at opposite ends of an arbitrary x, y, or z axis as desired? (And to make that answer meaningful, how long would they actually stay that way once purified?)

I ran into a fascinating little fact I didn't remember hearing before: if liquid H2 is cooled below 60 K, its heat capacity looks like that of a monoatomic gas. It simply doesn't have enough thermal energy to rotate, due to quantum effects.

Inevitably I find myself wondering how that works... in particular, does this mean you could take a container of liquid hydrogen at 14K or so and purify out molecules where the hydrogens are at opposite ends of an arbitrary x, y, or z axis as desired? (And to make that answer meaningful, how long would they actually stay that way once purified?)

I ran into a fascinating little fact I didn't remember hearing before: if H2 is cooled below 60 K, its heat capacity looks like that of a monoatomic gas. It simply doesn't have enough thermal energy to rotate, due to quantum effects.

Inevitably I find myself wondering how that works... in particular, does this mean you could take a container of liquid hydrogen at 14K or so and purify out molecules where the hydrogens are at opposite ends of an arbitrary x, y, or z axis as desired? (And to make that answer meaningful, how long would they actually stay that way once purified?)

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Mike Serfas
Mike Serfas
  • 473
  • 3
  • 8

Can liquid hydrogen be oriented along a single axis?

I ran into a fascinating little fact I didn't remember hearing before: if liquid H2 is cooled below 60 K, its heat capacity looks like that of a monoatomic gas. It simply doesn't have enough thermal energy to rotate, due to quantum effects.

Inevitably I find myself wondering how that works... in particular, does this mean you could take a container of liquid hydrogen at 14K or so and purify out molecules where the hydrogens are at opposite ends of an arbitrary x, y, or z axis as desired? (And to make that answer meaningful, how long would they actually stay that way once purified?)