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Cold is the presence of low temperature, especially in the atmosphere. In common usage, cold is often a subjective perception. A lower bound to temperature is
absolute zero Absolute zero is the lowest limit of the thermodynamic temperature scale, a state at which the enthalpy and entropy of a cooled ideal gas reach their minimum value, taken as zero kelvin. The fundamental particles of nature have minimum vibration ...
, defined as 0.00K on the Kelvin scale, an absolute thermodynamic temperature scale. This corresponds to on the Celsius scale, on the Fahrenheit scale, and on the Rankine scale. Since temperature relates to the thermal energy held by an object or a sample of matter, which is the kinetic energy of the random motion of the particle constituents of matter, an object will have less thermal energy when it is colder and more when it is hotter. If it were possible to cool a system to absolute zero, all motion of the particles in a sample of matter would cease and they would be at complete rest in the classical sense. The object could be described as having zero thermal energy. Microscopically in the description of quantum mechanics, however, matter still has zero-point energy even at absolute zero, because of the uncertainty principle.


Cooling

Cooling refers to the process of becoming cold, or lowering in temperature. This could be accomplished by removing heat from a system, or exposing the system to an environment with a lower temperature. Coolants are
fluid In physics, a fluid is a liquid, gas, or other material that continuously deforms (''flows'') under an applied shear stress, or external force. They have zero shear modulus, or, in simpler terms, are substances which cannot resist any shear ...
s used to cool objects, prevent freezing and prevent erosion in machines.
Air cooling Air cooling is a method of dissipating heat. It works by expanding the surface area or increasing the flow of air over the object to be cooled, or both. An example of the former is to add cooling fins to the surface of the object, either by maki ...
is the process of cooling an object by exposing it to air. This will only work if the air is at a lower temperature than the object, and the process can be enhanced by increasing the
surface area The surface area of a solid object is a measure of the total area that the surface of the object occupies. The mathematical definition of surface area in the presence of curved surfaces is considerably more involved than the definition of arc ...
, increasing the coolant flow rate, or decreasing the mass of the object. Another common method of cooling is exposing an object to ice, dry ice, or
liquid nitrogen Liquid nitrogen—LN2—is nitrogen in a liquid state at low temperature. Liquid nitrogen has a boiling point of about . It is produced industrially by fractional distillation of liquid air. It is a colorless, low viscosity liquid that is wide ...
. This works by
conduction Conductor or conduction may refer to: Music * Conductor (music), a person who leads a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra. * Conductor (album), ''Conductor'' (album), an album by indie rock band The Comas * Conduction, a type of structured f ...
; the heat is transferred from the relatively warm object to the relatively cold coolant. Laser cooling and magnetic evaporative cooling are techniques used to reach very low temperatures.


History


Early history

In ancient times, ice was not adopted for
food preservation Food preservation includes processes that make food more resistant to microorganism growth and slow the oxidation of fats. This slows down the decomposition and rancidification process. Food preservation may also include processes that inhibit ...
but used to cool wine which the Romans had also done. According to Pliny, Emperor Nero invented the ice bucket to chill wines instead of adding it to wine to make it cold as it would dilute it. Some time around 1700 BC Zimri-Lim, king of Mari Kingdom in northwest Iraq had created an "icehouse" called ''bit shurpin'' at a location close to his capital city on the banks of the
Euphrates The Euphrates () is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Tigris–Euphrates river system, Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia ( ''the land between the rivers'') ...
. In the 7th century BC the Chinese had used icehouses to preserve vegetables and fruits. During the Tang dynastic rule in China (618 -907 AD) a document refers to the practice of using ice that was in vogue during the
Eastern Chou Dynasty The Eastern Zhou (; zh, c=, p=Dōngzhōu, w=Tung1-chou1, t= ; 771–256 BC) was a Dynasties in Chinese history, royal dynasty of China and the second half of the Zhou dynasty. It was divided into two periods: the Spring and Autumn period, Spri ...
(770 -256 BC) by 94 workmen employed for "Ice-Service" to freeze everything from wine to dead bodies. Shachtman says that in the 4th century AD, the brother of the Japanese emperor
Nintoku , also known as was the 16th Emperor of Japan, according to the traditional List of Emperors of Japan, order of succession. Due to his reputation for goodness derived from depictions in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, he is sometimes referred to as ...
gave him a gift of ice from a mountain. The Emperor was so happy with the gift that he named the first of June as the "Day of Ice" and ceremoniously gave blocks of ice to his officials. Even in ancient times, Shachtman says, in Egypt and India, night cooling by evaporation of water and heat radiation, and the ability of salts to lower the freezing temperature of water was practiced. The ancient people of Rome and Greece were aware that boiled water cooled quicker than the ordinary water; the reason for this is that with boiling of water carbon dioxide and other gases, which are deterrents to cooling, are removed; but this fact was not known till the 17th century.


From the 17th century

Shachtman says that King James VI and I supported the work of
Cornelis Drebbel Cornelis Jacobszoon Drebbel ( ) (1572 – 7 November 1633) was a Dutch engineer and inventor. He was the builder of the first operational submarine in 1620 and an innovator who contributed to the development of measurement and control systems, op ...
as a magician to perform tricks such as producing thunder, lightning, lions, birds, trembling leaves and so forth. In 1620 he gave a demonstration in Westminster Abbey to the king and his courtiers on the power of cold. On a summer day, Shachtman says, Drebbel had created a chill (lowered the temperature by several degrees) in the hall of the Abbey, which made the king shiver and run out of the hall with his entourage. This was an incredible spectacle, says Shachtman. Several years before, Giambattista della Porta had demonstrated at the Abbey "ice fantasy gardens, intricate ice sculptures" and also iced drinks for banquets in Florence. The only reference to the artificial freezing created by Drebbel was by Francis Bacon. His demonstration was not taken seriously as it was considered one of his magic tricks, as there was no practical application then. Drebbel had not revealed his secrets. Shachtman says that Lord Chancellor Bacon, an advocate of experimental science, had tried in ''Novum Organum'', published in the late 1620s, to explain the artificial freezing experiment at Westminster Abbey, though he was not present during the demonstration, as "Nitre (or rather its spirit) is very cold, and hence nitre or salt when added to snow or ice intensifies the cold of the latter, the nitre by adding to its own cold, but the salt by supplying activity to the cold snow." This explanation on the cold inducing aspects of nitre (now known as potassium nitrate) and salt was tried then by many scientists. Shachtman says it was the lack of scientific knowledge in physics and chemistry that had held back progress in the beneficial use of ice until a drastic change in religious opinions in the 17th century. The intellectual barrier was broken by Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle who followed him in this quest for knowledge of cold. Boyle did extensive experimentation during the 17th century in the discipline of cold, and his research on pressure and volume was the forerunner of research in the field of cold during the 19th century. He explained his approach as "Bacon's identification of heat and cold as the right and left hands of nature". Boyle also refuted some of the theories mooted by Aristotle on cold by experimenting on transmission of cold from one material to the other. He proved that water was not the only source of cold but gold, silver and crystal, which had no water content, could also change to severe cold condition.


19th century

In the United States from about 1850 till end of 19th century export of ice was second only to cotton. The first ice box was developed by Thomas Moore, a farmer from Maryland in 1810 to carry butter in an oval shaped wooden tub. The tub was provided with a metal lining in its interior and surrounded by a packing of ice. A rabbit skin was used as insulation. Moore also developed an ice box for domestic use with the container built over a space of which was filled with ice. In 1825, ice harvesting by use of a horse drawn ice cutting device was invented by Nathaniel J. Wyeth. The cut blocks of uniform size ice was a cheap method of food preservation widely practiced in the United States. Also developed in 1855 was a steam powered device to haul 600 tons of ice per hour. More innovations ensued. Devices using compressed air as a refrigerants were invented.


20th century

Iceboxes were in widespread use from the mid-19th century to the 1930s, when the
refrigerator A refrigerator, colloquially fridge, is a commercial and home appliance consisting of a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump (mechanical, electronic or chemical) that transfers heat from its inside to its external environment so th ...
was introduced into the home. Most municipally consumed ice was harvested in winter from snow-packed areas or frozen lakes, stored in ice houses, and delivered domestically as iceboxes became more common. In 1913, refrigerators for home use were invented. In 1923 Frigidaire introduced the first self-contained unit. The introduction of Freon in the 1920s expanded the refrigerator market during the 1930s. Home freezers as separate compartments (larger than necessary just for ice cubes) were introduced in 1940. Frozen foods, previously a luxury item, became commonplace.


Physiological effects

Cold has numerous
physiological Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical ...
and pathological effects on the
human body The human body is the structure of a Human, human being. It is composed of many different types of Cell (biology), cells that together create Tissue (biology), tissues and subsequently organ systems. They ensure homeostasis and the life, viabi ...
, as well as on other organisms. Cold environments may promote certain
psychological Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...
traits, as well as having direct effects on the ability to move. Shivering is one of the first physiological responses to cold. Even at low temperatures, the cold can massively disrupt blood circulation. Extracellular water freezes and tissue is destroyed. It affects fingers, toes, nose, ears and cheeks particularly often. They discolor, swell, blister, and bleed. Local frostbite leads to so-called chilblains or even to the death of entire body parts. Only temporary cold reactions of the skin are without consequences. As blood vessels contract, they become cool and pale, with less oxygen getting into the tissue. Warmth stimulates blood circulation again and is painful but harmless. Comprehensive protection against the cold is particularly important for children and for sports. Extreme cold temperatures may lead to frostbite, sepsis, and hypothermia, which in turn may result in death.


Common myths

A common, but false, statement states that cold weather itself can induce the identically named
common cold The common cold or the cold is a viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory tract that primarily affects the respiratory mucosa of the nose, throat, sinuses, and larynx. Signs and symptoms may appear fewer than two days after exposu ...
. No scientific evidence of this has been found, although the disease, alongside
influenza Influenza, commonly known as "the flu", is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These symptoms ...
and others, does increase in prevalence with colder weather.


Notable cold locations and objects

* The National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado using a new technique, managed to chill a microscopic mechanical drum to 360 micro kelvins, making it the coldest object on record. Theoretically, using this technique, an object could be cooled to absolute zero. * The coldest known temperature ever achieved is a state of matter called the Bose–Einstein condensate which was first theorized to exist by Satyendra Nath Bose in 1924 and first created by Eric Cornell,
Carl Wieman Carl Edwin Wieman (born March 26, 1951) is an American physicist and educationist at Stanford University, and currently the A.D White Professor at Large at Cornell University. In 1995, while at the University of Colorado Boulder, he and Eric All ...
, and co-workers at JILA on 5 June 1995. They did this by cooling a dilute vapor consisting of approximately two thousand rubidium-87 atoms to below 170 nK (one nK or nanokelvin is a billionth (10−9) of a kelvin) using a combination of laser cooling (a technique that won its inventors
Steven Chu Steven ChuClaude Cohen-Tannoudji, and
William D. Phillips William Daniel Phillips (born November 5, 1948) is an American physicist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics, in 1997, with Steven Chu and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. Biography Phillips was born to William Cornelius Phillips of Juniata, Pennsylvan ...
the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics) and magnetic evaporative cooling. * The Boomerang Nebula is the coldest known natural location in the universe, with a temperature that is estimated at 1  K (−272.15 °C, −457.87 °F). * The Dwarf Planet Haumea is one of the coldest known objects in our solar system. With a Temperature of -401 degrees Fahrenheit or -241 degrees
Celsius The degree Celsius is the unit of temperature on the Celsius scale (originally known as the centigrade scale outside Sweden), one of two temperature scales used in the International System of Units (SI), the other being the Kelvin scale. The ...
* The Planck spacecraft's instruments are kept at 0.1 K (−273.05 °C, −459.49 °F) via passive and active cooling. * Absent any other source of heat, the temperature of the Universe is roughly 2.725 kelvins, due to the Cosmic microwave background radiation, a remnant of the
Big Bang The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the ...
. * Neptune's moon Triton has a surface temperature of 38.15 K (−235 °C, −391 °F) * Uranus with a black-body temperature of 58.2 K (−215.0 °C, −354.9 °F). *
Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...
with a black-body temperature of 81.1 K (−192.0 °C, −313.7 °F). *
Mercury Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...
, despite being close to the Sun, is actually cold during its night, with a temperature of about 93.15 K (−180 °C, −290 °F). Mercury is cold during its night because it has no
atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A s ...
to trap in heat from the Sun. * Jupiter with a black-body temperature of 110.0 K (−163.2 °C, −261.67 °F). * Mars with a black-body temperature of 210.1 K (−63.05 °C, −81.49 °F). * The coldest continent on Earth is Antarctica. The coldest place on Earth is the Antarctic Plateau, an area of Antarctica around the South Pole that has an altitude of around . The lowest reliably measured temperature on Earth of 183.9 K (−89.2 °C, −128.6 °F) was recorded there at Vostok Station on 21 July 1983. The Poles of Cold are the places in the
Southern Southern may refer to: Businesses * China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China * Southern Airways, defunct US airline * Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US * Southern Airways Express, M ...
and
Northern Hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the Equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined as being in the same celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the solar system as Earth's Nort ...
s where the lowest air temperatures have been recorded. (''See List of weather records''). * The cold deserts of the North Pole, known as the tundra region, experiences an annual snow fall of a few inches and temperatures recorded are as low as 203.15 K (−70 °C, −94 °F). Only a few small plants survive in the generally frozen ground (thaws only for a short spell). * Cold deserts of the Himalayas are a feature of a rain-shadow zone created by the mountain peaks of the Himalaya range that runs from
Pamir Knot The Pamir Mountains are a mountain range between Central Asia and Pakistan. It is located at a junction with other notable mountains, namely the Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun, Hindu Kush and the Himalaya mountain ranges. They are among the world ...
extending to the southern border of the Tibetan plateau; however this mountain range is also the reason for the monsoon rain fall in the Indian subcontinent. This zone is located in an elevation of about 3,000 m, and covers Ladakh, Lahaul, Spiti and Pooh. In addition, there are inner valleys within the main Himalayas such as Chamoli, some areas of Kinnaur, Pithoragarh and northern Sikkim which are also categorized as cold deserts. File:Adelie_Penguins_on_iceberg.jpg, Antarctica File:Tanglanglapass.jpg, Cold desert of the Himalayas in Ladakh Image:Frozen_tree_-_3.JPG, Tree with hoarfrost Image:Alphonse-Desjardins.jpg, Frozen Saint Lawrence River Image:Sea ice terrain.jpg, Winter sea ice Image:Ice Climbing.jpg, Ice climbing


Mythology and culture

* Niflheim was a realm of primordial ice and cold with nine frozen rivers in
Norse Mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern period ...
. * The "Hell in Dante's Inferno" is stated as Cocytus a frozen lake where Virgil and Dante were deposited.


See also

* Technical, scientific ** ** ** ** ** ** * Entertainment, myth ** ** ** ** ** s * Meteorological: ** ** ** ** ** ** ** * Geographical and climatological: ** ** ** **


References

Bibliography * * * * * *


External links

* * {{authority control Thermodynamics