Abstract
DETERMINATIONS of the thickness of the film that covers all solid surfaces in contact with liquid helium II have been made by Daunt and Mendelssohn1, and by Kikoin and Lasarev2, by methods which depend on the measurement of the volume of helium II required to form the film on surfaces of known area. The experiments, for which no great accuracy was claimed, gave an average value of 3·5 × 10-6 cm. for the thickness, and no definite indication of a change of thickness with temperature. Atkins3 has used a static method involving condensation of helium gas to form the film and bulk liquid, and a dynamic method depending on oscillatory motion of the film. In the latter case, the experiments indicated that the thickness varied inversely as the height above the level of the bulk liquid, the thickness at 1 cm. being about 10 × 10-6 cm.
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References
Daunt, J. G., and Mendelssohn, K., Proc. Roy. Soc., A, 170, 423 (1939).
Kikoin, A. A., and Lasarev, B. G., Nature, 142, 289 (1939).
Atkins, K. R., Thesis, Cambridge (1948).
Frenkel, J., J. Phys. U.S.S.R., 2, 365 (1940).
Schiff, L. I., Phys. Rev., 59, 838 (1941).
Bijl, A., de Boer, J., and Michels, A., Physica, 8, 655 (1941).
Mott, N. F., Phil. Mag., 40, 61 (1949).
Rothen, A., Rev. Sci. Instr., 16, 26 (1945).
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JACKSON, L., BURGE, E. Thickness of the Helium II Film. Nature 164, 660–661 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164660a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164660a0
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