Onne, Heike Kamerlingh

Onnes, Heike Kamerlingh (1853-1926) was a Dutch physicist who succeeded in liquefying helium in 1908 and discovered superconductivity in mercury in 1911. He wrote at the time Mercury has passed into a new state, which on account of its extraordinary electrical properties may be called the superconducting state. He received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1913. 

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1913. 

Handel, J. van den. (1973). Kamerlingh Onnes, Heike. In Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 7, ed. C.C. Gillispie. New York Charles Scribner s Sons. 

Low-temperature research requires hard work and imagination, but successful advances are richly rewarded. Seven Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry have been awarded for low-temperature research. The first, in 1913, went to the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who discovered how to cool He gas to 4.2 K and convert it into a liquid. The American William Giauque received the 1949 prize in chemistry and the Russian Pyotr Kapitsa won the 1978 prize in physics. Each was honored for a variety of discoveries resulting from low-temperature research, and each developed a new technique for achieving low temperature. 

The discovery of superconduction was made at Leiden University, by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes back in 1911 whilst experimenting with the electrical resistance of mercury, cooled to liquid helium temperature. His efforts were recognised with the Nobel Prise for Physics in 1913 and much later, a... 

For example, in 1911, Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes cooled some mercury to the hoiling point of liquid helium 4 K. He found that at this low temperature, the mercury developed an astonishing property. The super-cooled mercury had zero resistance when an electric current passed through it. In other words, none of the energy of the electrical current was given off as wasted heat. The mercury had become a superconductor—a material with no resistance to electric current. 

The discovery of superconductivity was not very dramatic. When Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes succeeded in liquefying helium in 1908 he looked around for something worth measuring at that temperature range. His choice feU upon the resistivity of metals. He tried platinum first and found that its resistivity continued to decline at lower temperatures, tending to some small but finite value as the temperature approached absolute zero. He could have tried a large number of other metals with similar prosaic results. But he was in luck. His second metal, mercury, showed quite unorthodox behavior, and in 1911 he showed that its resistivity suddenly... 

A superconductor is a material that loses all electrical resistance below a characteristic temperature called the superconducting transition temperature, Tc. This phenomenon was discovered in 1911 by the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who found that mercury abruptly loses its electrical resistance when it is cooled with liquid helium to 4.2 K (Figure 21.12). Below its Tc, a superconductor becomes a perfect conductor, and an electric current, once started, flows indefinitely without loss of energy. 

In the mid-1890s Dewar was responsible for one of the most important developments in the history of the Royal Institution the establishment and endowment of the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory of the Royal Institution. This not only entailed the acquisition of a new building, but also the direct support of Dewar s cryogenic research. Success came in 1898 when he finally liquefied hydrogen. However, in the race with Heike Kamerlingh Onnes at the University of Leiden to liquefy helium, Dewar lost and the Nobel Prize went to Kamerlingh Onnes. Although Dewar was nominated several times, he never won the coveted prize. 

Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovers superconductivity in mercury at temperatures of 4 kelvins (4° K). 

Like some other metals, mercury exhibits unusual behavior at extremely low temperatures, hi 1911, Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovered the phenomenon of superconductivity by freezing mercury to only a few degrees above absolute zero. At that temperature, mercury loses all of its natural resistance to the flow of electricity and becomes superconductive. 

One of the important uses for yttrium is in superconductors. Superconductors were first discovered by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes (1853-1926) in 1911. Kamerlingh-Onnes found that certain metals cooled to nearly absolute zero lose all resistance to an electric current. Absolute zero is the coldest temperature possible, about 59°F (-273°Q. Once an electric current gets started in these very cold metals, it keeps going forever. These metals are called superconductors. 

It has long been known that a metal becomes a better conductor as its temperature is lowered. In 1911, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, a Dutch physicist, was studying this effect on mercury. 

As an introduction to the main part of the paper, it is pertinent to mention this year as the anniversary of a few significant events in thermal physics. Let us note the centenary of the first helium liquefaction by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes at Leiden. In his plenary report at the 18 European conference on thermophysical properties Dr. Amo Laesecke called this event a breakthrough in research on thermophysical properties of substances and, among other problems, he related the studies into metastable states of substances to uncharted territories in thermophysics. In this connection our workshop seems to be well-timed. 

Now she is the editor of the annual volume Metastable States and phase Transitions / possibly, the only edition devoted exclusively to the phenomenon of metastability. Finally, G.V. Ermakov (1938), the coauthor of the report Investigation of the attainable superheat of liquids in a wide region of pressure at that Conference, has developed the method of a rising droplet to study the nucleation kinetics under pressure and a number of methods to determine the thermodynamic properties of liquids in superheated states. To my opinion, his attitude to science in a broad sense corresponds to the spirit of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes . ... 

During the first decade of the 20th century, the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes established a cryogenics (low-temperature) laboratory in Leiden where, in 1908, he was the first to make liquid helium (4.2 K see chapter 4). By expansion of liquid helium he even achieved a temperature of 1.5 K. These extreme temperatures were measured by a helium-gas thermometer 145 mm pressure at 273 K (32°F or 0°C 3 mm at 4.25 K (-452°F or -269°C). It would take two more decades to achieve 0.1 K (see chapter 4). The Leiden laboratory attraaed world-famous physicists who visited and conducted experiments at temperatures never before experienced on the planet. 

In 1911, Kamerlingh Onnes cooled a thread of pure mercury (1/20 mm or 0.002 inch diameter) in a capillary tube and found a smooth decrease in resistance as the temperature was lowered. At 4.2 K, he observed an abrupt decrease in resistivity from about 1/500 that at 273 K to 1/10 that at 273 K it reduced to about 1/10 at 1.5 K. Resistance had virtually disappeared and solid mercury became a superconductor at these incredibly low temperatures. Similar superconductivity transitions were observed by Kamerlingh Onnes for tin (3.8 K) and lead (6 K). The thermal motions of the atoms, associated with defects in conducting electricity, drastically decrease below the superconducting temperature (X). Heike Kamerlingh Onnes won the 1913 Nobel Prize in ph) ics. The modern theory of superconductivity was developed in 1957 by three physicists at the University of Illinois, John Bardeen (1908-91), Leon N. Cooper (1930- ), and John Robert Schrieffer (1931- ). They shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in physics (Bardeen also shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics for invention of the transistor he is the only double Nobel laureate in physics). 

The Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926) overcame the last obstacle when, in 1908, he cooled helium first in a bath of liquid hydrogen, then applied the Joule-Thomson effect. He produced liquid helium at a temperature of 4° K. 

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926) Dutch physicist Leiden, Netherlands. Adrien Marie Legendre (1752-1833) French mathematician Paris, France. 

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