dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaFriendly units for coldness
| Authors | P. Fraundorf |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0606227 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0606227 |
Abstract
Measures of temperature that center around human experience get lots of use. Of course thermal physics insights of the last century have shown that reciprocal temperature (1/kT) has applications that temperature addresses less well. In addition to taking on negative absolute values under population inversion (e.g. of magnetic spins), bits and bytes turn 1/kT into an informatic measure of the thermal ambient for developing correlations within any complex system. We show here that, in the human-friendly units of bytes and food Calories, water freezes when 1/kT ~200 ZB/Cal or kT ~5 Cal/YB. Casting familiar benchmarks into these terms shows that habitable human space requires coldness values (part of the time, at least) between 0 and 40 ZB/Cal with respect body temperature ~100 degrees F, a range in kT of ~1 Cal/YB. Insight into these physical quantities underlying thermal equilibration may prove useful for budding scientists, as well as the general public, in years ahead.
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"abstract": "Measures of temperature that center around human experience get lots of use.\nOf course thermal physics insights of the last century have shown that\nreciprocal temperature (1/kT) has applications that temperature addresses less\nwell. In addition to taking on negative absolute values under population\ninversion (e.g. of magnetic spins), bits and bytes turn 1/kT into an informatic\nmeasure of the thermal ambient for developing correlations within any complex\nsystem. We show here that, in the human-friendly units of bytes and food\nCalories, water freezes when 1/kT ~200 ZB/Cal or kT ~5 Cal/YB. Casting familiar\nbenchmarks into these terms shows that habitable human space requires coldness\nvalues (part of the time, at least) between 0 and 40 ZB/Cal with respect body\ntemperature ~100 degrees F, a range in kT of ~1 Cal/YB. Insight into these\nphysical quantities underlying thermal equilibration may prove useful for\nbudding scientists, as well as the general public, in years ahead.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0606227",
"authors": [
"P. Fraundorf"
],
"categories": [
"physics.pop-ph"
],
"title": "Friendly units for coldness",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0606227"
},
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"execution_id": "89a551bd-93c8-41df-9457-631955609c96",
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