Notebooks
- ID-nummer
- 2004.005.000
- Titel
- Notebooks
- Objektkategori
- Dokument & anteckningar
- Publik beskrivning
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These books contain two notes that are associated with astonishing observations and great joy for Douglas Osheroff. As a doctoral student, Osheroff was working on experiments where the isotope helium-3 was cooled to very low temperatures. On 29 November 1971 at 10:05 pm, he noted that the cooling rate suddenly at one point fell to one third. Osheroff and his supervisors David Lee and Robert Richardson realised that they were onto something important, but they weren't sure exactly what. On 20 April 1972, at 2:40 am, Osheroff jotted down a new observation. He had found the explanation for the phenomenon: helium-3 could become super fluid.
“It was an exciting moment. There was absolutely nobody else in the entire building to share my discovery with. So, I waited an hour, until I couldn’t stand it any longer, and then I called my advisers.”
The discovery earned Osheroff, Lee and Richardson the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Douglas Osheroff donated the notebooks to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2004. - Provenance
- 351 Nobel Museum Temporary
Part of Notebooks