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by Anonymous on April 2nd, 2007

Anonymous

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At absolute zero temperature, how long would it take something to freeze?

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Answers. 9 helpful answers below.

  • by anonymous on April 2nd, 2007

    anonymous

    That depends on a few variables. One is the density of the media, or thermodynamic properties.
    Some things exchange heat at different rates than others. For example, steel is a pretty good conductor for heat energy, whereas asbestos is not.

    Another factor would be the size or mass of the objects. If you intended to cool the entire earth with a gram of material at 0K, you would not appreciably affect the earths temperature, but raise that of the other object.

    Another factor is the starting temperature of the object being exposed to the 0K object. For example, if you had one gram of a substance at 0K, and another gram of the same substance at +560K, it would not cool the hot object to Ok, but to 0C to room temperature, as well as the 0K object, depending on the duration of exposure and ambient temperature.

    In short, you have not provided enough details to reach a conclusion.

    Except for this, unless the object at 0K was extremely large, and the ambient temperature also 0K, the net effect would not be to cool the warm object to 0K, but to raise the temperature of the 0K object to some point above absolute zero, depending on the mass and energy state of the introduced object, and cool the warm object to that same energy average.

    It should also be noted that different elements and chemicals freeze at different temperatures. For example, if you wanted to know the time to freeze a 1kg chunk of steel at room temperture when exposed to a 1 kg block of steel at absolute zero...0.00 seconds.

    The steel blocks are both frozen already.

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  • by Psycho the kid on April 2nd, 2007

    Psycho the kid

    Depends on the something...and depends on your definition of freeze.

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  • by seaninkg on October 17th, 2007

    seaninkg

    its impossible to get absolute zero since it is kelven to the negative infinity and the object wouldnt freeze it would be stopped in time

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  • by DavidHume on April 2nd, 2007

    DavidHume

    It would depend on what the something was and on what (if any) medium it was in. Pretty quick though. That is as cold as it gets!

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  • by The Eskimo on December 2nd, 2007

    The Eskimo

    The answer is very simple even with knowing what the item is, all items from gases to metal to honey all have specific heat capacity, you should be able to download a chart from the net, all items in turn have the same opposing charts for specific heat loss of metres squared and cubic metres, there are also download charts for this.

    You only need the weight, surface area and the product type, along with about 10 mins and a calculator

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  • by Roger Kovaciny on October 17th, 2007

    Roger Kovaciny

    Solid objects lose heat in proportion to the fifth power of the difference between them and whatever they are inside... but that depends on a lot of things, such as the conductivity of the solid object (if it won't conduct electricity, it won't lose heat very fast either) and the density of what it's touching (it would lose heat a lot faster in Helium II than it would in a vacuum, which are the only two possibilities at absolute zero.)

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  • by weatherman taking week or so off on October 17th, 2007

    weatherman taking week or so off

    If by freeze, you mean attaining solid form, there are items which are solid at room temperature. So, it depends on the item. Then there are other aspects. At normal atmospheric pressure, Carbon dioxide freezes at about -40 degrees, or about 230 Kelvin. Nitrogen freezes at an even lower temperature, and Helium liquifies at about 5 Kelvin, I am not sure if Helium can freeze at normal atmospheric pressures. So the atmospheric pressure is another aspect. So there are three major aspects:
    - What are you trying to freeze?
    - What is it's freezing point?
    - What is the atmospheric pressure?

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  • by Cut My Heart on April 2nd, 2007

    Cut My Heart

    Like water? Only a few seconds! Actually, pretty much anything would freeze in about a minute at absolute zero!

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  • by vicki the verifier on April 11th, 2007

    vicki the verifier

    Is this a trick question and is there any intelligent life on this site, seriously, i feel like 'not sure' in Idiocracy. I'm going to bed!

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