• Question: How hot do the crystals have to be to be tortured?

    Asked by to Lynne on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Lynne Thomas

      Lynne Thomas answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Good question! That really depends on the material that I’m looking at. And we also often cool them down a long way using liquid nitrogen (to 100K (K=Kelvin) which is about -170 degrees) and I’m not sure I’d be happy having that done to me! I’ve done some experiments where I’ve cooled crystals down to 20K (about -250 degrees!). Some of the most fun materials I’m looking at change colour when you heat them to about 60 degrees. Sometimes we heat things up to 150-200 degrees. Most of my compounds will be broken down if I heat them higher than that and so they no longer do anything useful.

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