From owner-biophysics@net.bio.net Thu Apr 28 23:00:00 1994
Newsgroups: bionet.biophysics
Path: biosci!daresbury!trane.uninett.no!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!torn!utnut!alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca!mroussel
From: mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel)
Subject: Re: Discussion: What is "temperature"?
Message-ID: <1994Apr29.184859.29830@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 1994 18:48:59 GMT
References: <runsun.3.016C02B2@bilbo.bio.purdue.edu> <27APR199422411859@utkvx.utk.edu> <1994Apr29.121008.11972@cs.joensuu.fi>
Organization: Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto
Lines: 13

In article <1994Apr29.121008.11972@cs.joensuu.fi> villeh@cs.joensuu.fi
(Ville Hautam{ki) writes:
>It is movement of molecules, (in absolute Zero there are NO movement)

     That's not true.  Even at absolute zero, every molecule in a system
has to have a nonzero kinetic energy (the infamous "zero-point energy")
to avoid violating the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.  A correct
statement along these lines would be that at absolute zero, every
molecule (or, in general, every degree of freedom) of a system has to be
in its ground state.

				Marc R. Roussel
                                mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca

.