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- Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!csa3.lbl.gov!sichase
- From: sichase@csa3.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
- Newsgroups: sci.physics
- Subject: Re: Budding Physicist
- Date: 7 Jan 1993 10:42 PST
- Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
- Lines: 26
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <7JAN199310424344@csa3.lbl.gov>
- References: <93007.100220STANTONK@QUCDN.QueensU.CA>
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-
- In article <93007.100220STANTONK@QUCDN.QueensU.CA>, Ken <STANTONK@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> writes...
- >My seven year old asked me a question that left me scratching my head.
- >Since I am not a physicist, I need your help. :^)
- >His question started with queries about temperature scales, absolute
- >zero and so on. That I could handle. :^) Then, he asked what the MAXIMUM
- >possible temperature was, according to theory. My answer was, "What?".
- >He explained further to me, "Well, I understand that temperature is a measure
- >of the speed of the molecules. And you told me that Einstein's theory
- >means that if the molecules were travelling at the speed of light, they
- >should be energy, not matter. So, what temperature should that be, according
- >to the theory?" And I thought questions like this were only supposed to
- >start when they reached age 16 :-/
-
- Temperature can go arbitrarily high. Velocities "saturate" at v = c, but
- momenta can increase forever. You need different formulae for temperature in
- the relativistic regime. Hagedorn is probably the physicist most closely
- associated with this stuff, and his book _Relativistic Kinematics_ is
- a must read for students of relativistic heavy ion physics, such as myself.
-
- -Scott
- --------------------
- Scott I. Chase "It is not a simple life to be a single cell,
- SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV although I have no right to say so, having
- been a single cell so long ago myself that I
- have no memory at all of that stage of my
- life." - Lewis Thomas
-