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NOVA; Absolute Zero: The Conquest Of Cold
12/06/2007
HV (home video) Master 16x9 FHA
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- Series
- NOVA
- Program
- Absolute Zero: The Conquest Of Cold
- Program Number
3504
- Series Description
Premiered March 1974 NOVA is a general-interest documentary series that addresses a single science issue each week. Billed as "science adventures for curious grown-ups" when it first aired in March, 1974, NOVA continues to offer an informative and entertaining approach to a challenging subject. 1996 marked NOVA's 23rd season, which makes it the longest-running science program on national television. It is also one of television's most acclaimed series, having won every major television award, most of them many times over. Series release date: 3/3/1974
- Program Description
Part One, "The Conquest of Cold," opens in the 1600s when the nature of cold and even heat were a complete mystery. Are they different phenomena or aspects of some unified feature of nature? Are they added to a substance or qualities of the substance itself? The experiments that settled these questions helped stoke the Industrial Revolution, which exploited such fundamental insights as that heat always flows from hot to cold.
The key moments in cold in this episode include: Cornelius Drebbel's spooky trick of turning summer into winter for the English king, achieved in much the way that homemade ice cream is produced; Antoine Lavoisier's battle with Count Benjamin Rumford over the caloric theory of heat, an intellectual contest set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, in which Lavoisier unfortunately lost his head; and Michael Faraday's explosive experiments to liquefy gases, which established the principles that make refrigerators possible.
- Duration
00:56:46
- Asset Type
Broadcast program
- Media Type
Video
- Genres
- Documentary
- Topics
- Science
- Citation
- Chicago: “NOVA; Absolute Zero: The Conquest Of Cold,” 12/06/2007, GBH Archives, accessed October 1, 2023, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_F98E3A1257194B4F8643496CA7B98368.
- MLA: “NOVA; Absolute Zero: The Conquest Of Cold.” 12/06/2007. GBH Archives. Web. October 1, 2023. <http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_F98E3A1257194B4F8643496CA7B98368>.
- APA: NOVA; Absolute Zero: The Conquest Of Cold. Boston, MA: GBH Archives. Retrieved from http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_F98E3A1257194B4F8643496CA7B98368