TY - JOUR

T1 - Science of helium in technology.

AU - McClintock, Peter V. E.

N1 - Review of "Helium Cryogenics" by Steven W. Van Sciver, Plenum, 1986. Pp.429.

PY - 1987/3/26

Y1 - 1987/3/26

N2 - Liquid helium is something of an oddity. Its existence as a liquid at all is rather marginal, as shown by the ease with which it can be vaporized by tiny influxes of heat - just one watt is enough to evaporate about a litre of liquid in an hour. For temperatures below 2.17K, it behaves as though it were an interpenetrating mixture of two completely miscible fluids: a (relatively ordinary) normal fluid component, and a superfluid component which carries no entropy and whose viscosityis identically zero. It is the latter component that gives rise to liquid helium's celebrated frictionless-flow properties, enabling it, for example, to climb out of any open vessel in which it is placed.

AB - Liquid helium is something of an oddity. Its existence as a liquid at all is rather marginal, as shown by the ease with which it can be vaporized by tiny influxes of heat - just one watt is enough to evaporate about a litre of liquid in an hour. For temperatures below 2.17K, it behaves as though it were an interpenetrating mixture of two completely miscible fluids: a (relatively ordinary) normal fluid component, and a superfluid component which carries no entropy and whose viscosityis identically zero. It is the latter component that gives rise to liquid helium's celebrated frictionless-flow properties, enabling it, for example, to climb out of any open vessel in which it is placed.

U2 - 10.1038/326340a0

DO - 10.1038/326340a0

M3 - Book/Film/Article review

VL - 326

SP - 340

EP - 340

JO - Nature

JF - Nature

IS - 6111

ER -