Day 273 – Absolute Zero

Every now and again, thanks to the way that I have numbered my lockdown posts this year (remember Day 1?), a number comes up which clearly has a bigger meaning than just how many days we’ve been “stuck inside”.

273 is one of those.

And that’s because -273.15ºC is Absolute zero. Not the terrible alcohol free vodka, but:

the lowest limit of the thermodynamic temperature scale, a state at which the enthalpy and entropy of a cooled ideal gas reach their minimum value, taken as zero kelvins. The fundamental particles of nature have minimum vibrational motion, retaining only quantum mechanical, zero-point energy-induced particle motion.

Yeah. That.

There’s also a theoretical temperature called Absolute Hot, but since that is equal to

141,678,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kelvins
(or approximately 141,678,499,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,726.85ºC)

I’m rather hopeful that we won’t need to address that in Days of Lockdown.

At least not any time soon.