Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Compressing super-fluid Helium?

ryan0713 - 10-10-2012 at 17:24

Hello,

I had an idea recently about compressing helium to unimaginably small sizes. Since resistance to compression is caused by individual atoms colliding with the container, and super-fluid helium has almost no atomic movement, couldn't you compress the helium to incredibly small sizes? It's just a random idea, but it may work.

-Ryan0713

ryan0713 - 10-10-2012 at 17:28

How stupid of me, you can't compress a liquid. Sorry.:D

watson.fawkes - 10-10-2012 at 18:53

Quote: Originally posted by ryan0713  
resistance to compression is caused by individual atoms colliding with the container
Actually, it's the Pauli exclusion principle. All those 1s electrons don't want to be overlapping each other.

Endimion17 - 10-10-2012 at 19:36

Quote: Originally posted by ryan0713  
How stupid of me, you can't compress a liquid. Sorry.:D


Of course you can.
If you want to learn about superfluids, you should first learn about regular fluids and leave elementary school myths behind. :)

Fluids are compressible. I think I've read somewhere that if water wasn't compressible, the sea level would be some 20 meters higher above the Mariana trench.