Chemical Eye on Transitioning from Pluribus to Unum

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts
His acts being seven ages.

And players flub their lines occasionally, as did President Barack Obama and Chief Justice John Roberts, just before the much-anticipated Inaugural Address of the 44th President of the United States of America.  It wasn’t to be, or not to be, a soliloquy, since on the one hand, Barack Obama was onstage speaking to the entire world, not just to himself.  But on the other hand, the inspiring theme of the preceding festivities was “We Are One”.

During the speech, when I still thought I was in the audience, I was set in our Honors College dormitory, surrounded by staff and students, including a foreign-exchange student from Iceland.  The Dean was also there, as was a journalist who covers the education beat for the local paper.  As I listened, I started to realize that the words were not just words, but each one seemed to have a physical impact on me.  This was momentous.

Afterwards, the reporter took a few students aside to get some reactions for his review, the Dean whispered his personal review to me--“I thought it was weak”--and there seemed to be a never-ending succession of talking heads complaining that “there wasn’t anything that would make it into Bartlett’s ”.  I was flabbergasted.  I could only think “Don’t these critics get it?  We’re not in the audience anymore!”

This eerie feeling started to set in when Obama said these audaciously hopeful words:
"We cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace."

The lines of tribe shall soon dissolve!  I still get goose bumps thinking about that hopeful prophecy.  But is it just wishful thinking?  As usual, for me anyway, an analogous physico-chemical phenomenon immediately bubbled-up in my imagination: the superfluid transition of liquid helium.

When a liquid freezes into a solid, for instance, this is called a “phase transition ”.  And you would be amazed at how many renditions there are of this seemingly simple act.  A liquid can also boil, of course, but did you know that pure solids can rapidly change size and/or shape right on (temperature) cue?  When heated above its transition temperature, a crooked wire of nickel-titanium alloy will become straight as a pin.  And when pure plutonium is heated, it will adopt four different crystalline forms, expanding by a whopping 25%, before it gets downsized to yet another two crystal structures, and finally shrinks when it melts at 640 degrees Celsius. These are the seven acts of plutonium before it vaporizes.

Respectively, these phase transitions create exciting opportunities for new medical devices, and intimidating technical challenges for maintaining the safety of our nuclear weapons stockpile.  But they contain no hint for the social transition that must occur when lines of tribe dissolve.  For that, you need to witness the superfluid transition of liquid helium.  

Aside from its incredibly low temperature of 270 degrees Celcius--below zero!--helium boils, evaporates, swishes and swirls like any other liquid.  But if it cools one degree further, it undergoes a sudden transition to a superfluid that is unlike any other form of matter.  It completely lacks viscosity, and behaves in a way that defies logic as well as gravity.  What is happening at the atomic level, and cannot be completely explained by theoretical physics, is that the trillions and trillions of helium atoms are no longer behaving as a collection of independent atoms, constrained only by the surface of the liquid, but as a perfectly coherent, frictionless whole.  E pluribus unum.

This play isn’t over, and each of us needs to be ready to transition to our next role, whatever that may be.


Preston MacDougall is a chemistry professor at Middle Tennessee State University. His "Chemical Eye" commentaries are featured in the Arts and Public Affairs portion of the Murfreesboro/Nashville NPR station WMOT (www.wmot.org).


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