ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 15, 1997 TAG: 9704150076
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: LISA APPLEGATE THE ROANOKE TIMES
Robert Richardson, who majored in physics at Virginia Tech so he could pursue other interests too, helped discover something scientists really call super.
Robert Richardson has such a mischievous grin, such a sparkle in his eye, that when he tells you he drinks liquid nitrogen for kicks, you believe him.
He's done it many times, he said, usually to spice up a physics presentation.
There's a special trick to drinking the frothy liquid. It's like dabbing a drop of water on a hot skillet - it dances just above the surface before evaporating. The same thing happens when the nitrogen hits the warmth of his tongue.
That's unless he laughs accidentally.
"I laughed and swallowed it," he said, recalling one mishap two decades ago. "The [gaseous] pressure started building up in my stomach, and, you know, there are only two ways to get rid of it."
Fortunately, he said, it came up "as the loudest belch you've ever heard. I was talking to a high school group at the time, so they thought it was great."
Physics, for this man, is fun.
It's been almost 40 years since the Cornell University professor began his studies at Virginia Tech. It's been 25 years since he and two Cornell colleagues made the discovery that was honored with a Nobel Prize in December. Tonight, after spending two days on the Tech campus, Richardson will hold a public lecture on his work.
He can talk of the discovery - described by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences as a "breakthrough in low-temperature physics" - with wide-eyed enthusiasm as though it happened yesterday.
Richardson, along with David Lee and Douglas Osheroff, was studying helium-3 and its phase transitions. A phase transition occurs when, for example, the temperature drops and water vapor becomes water or water freezes into ice.
The trio of physicists were trying to find a transition in solid helium by dropping it closer to the coldest of cold temperatures, absolute zero (that's -273.15 degrees Celsius, for the truly curious).
Instead of finding the transition they'd expected, they discovered a liquid form of helium-3. This form was a superfluid.
A superfluid is, according to a World Wide Web page developed by Cornell graduate students, "neat." It flows without friction. You could direct a stream of it at a coin balanced on its side without toppling the coin because the superfluid exerts no force. If you poured it into a cup, it would flow up the other side and out the top.
Scientists had known, theoretically, that such a find was possible. But for decades, no one could.
Richardson and his colleagues stumbled onto it.
"From the time we thought we had discovered something to the time we had proof was about six months," he said. "It was great fun to experiment with."
So, it's fun to play with. And?
A superfluid behaves like a superconductor. By studying the helium-3 superfluid, scientists might be able to improve superconductors. That could result in faster, more efficient computers or allow cheaper electricity for homes.
The study of helium-3 went hand in hand with the development of magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. Hospitals now use that technology to scan patients internally.
But all that doesn't seem to interest Richardson as much as the sheer fascination of it all. Being a professor of physics has, for him, has been a way to pursue his keen curiosity.
"I was never a particularly good student," he said of his days at Tech. "I worked hard, but not too hard. I had other things I wanted to pursue."
Part of the reason he chose physics, in fact, was because it allowed more electives than other majors. He wanted to study lots of English literature, too.
Richardson was a leader in Tech's Corps of Cadets. He has fond memories of riding the Huckleberry - one of the last steam engines in the country - from Blacksburg to Roanoke, where his drill team would march in all the local parades.
"The main thing [Virginia Tech] gave me was confidence," he said.
And Tech is proud to claim him, its first alumnus to win the Nobel. During his two-day stay, Richardson is being swept from dinner with President Paul Torgersen to meeting with graduate students to speaking with the public.
Physics Department Chairman Lay Nam Chang said having Richardson here means a great deal to students who wonder about the future of experimental physics.
To Richardson, his passion "is not all used up. You've got to have experimental physics to discover the correct ways of the universe. What you thought was true may not be. How do you know that there isn't anything left to discover?"
LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON THE ROANOKE TIMES. "How do you know thatby CNBthere isn't anything left to discover?" says Robert Richardson, who
is visiting his alma mater, Virginia Tech. color.