Chapter 16 Summary

Chapter 16 was interesting but so hard to comprehend due to the uncertainty of it. The majority of the chapter dealt with the crazy characteristics of elements when exposed to extreme conditions of temperature. Kean starts out with the story of a few Englishmen that set out to be the first men to ever be 90 degrees below the equator. Though, Norwegians had already been there first when the five men reached the spot. Matters got even worse for the men because they became stuck in harsh snow storms for weeks and ran out of supplies, including a heat source, due to their tin kerosene holders leaking. This was caused by "Tin Leprosy"
 The next part doesn’t focus on certain scientists but more so the fascinating form that matter can take when temperature is either extremely cold or hot. In one example, the scientists dropped the temperature to around – 445 degrees Fahrenheit in order to combine xenon and argon as well as krypton to other elements, including the noble gases. Kean then moves on to an even more unimaginable idea of Bose-Einstein condensate. This then moved into an experiment conducted that reached one billionth of a degree above zero where all of the atoms basically combine into one huge super atom