{"id":239135,"date":"2026-06-17T03:24:42","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T08:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/physicists-identify-upper-limit-to-resistivity-in-a-pure-metal"},"modified":"2026-06-17T03:24:42","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T08:24:42","slug":"physicists-identify-upper-limit-to-resistivity-in-a-pure-metal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/physicists-identify-upper-limit-to-resistivity-in-a-pure-metal","title":{"rendered":"Physicists identify upper limit to resistivity in a pure metal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/physicists-identify-upper-limit-to-resistivity-in-a-pure-metal.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Experimental atomic physicists have discovered there is a maximum amount of electrical resistance, or resistivity, that can result from collisions between electrons.<\/p>\n<p>A team from the University of Toronto, L\u2019\u00c9cole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure in Paris, and Lehigh University in Pennsylvania studied ultracold potassium atoms cooled to near absolute zero. They found that when increasing the rate at which atoms collide, the resulting resistance eventually stops increasing, offering new insights into what causes resistivity at the microscopic level.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cElectron-on-electron collisions are known to increase resistivity in some pure materials,\u201d explains Professor Joseph Thywissen in the Department of Physics and the Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control in the Faculty of Arts &amp; Science at the University of Toronto, senior author of <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/abstract\/10.1103\/bhw8-p536\" target=\"_blank\">a study published in <i>Physical Review Letters<\/i><\/a>. \u201cThe energy produced by electrical resistance shows up as heat. Transmission lines, for instance, lose up to 8% of generated electrical power. Resistivity is also interesting to study because it can be a signature of new physics in materials.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Experimental atomic physicists have discovered there is a maximum amount of electrical resistance, or resistivity, that can result from collisions between electrons. A team from the University of Toronto, L\u2019\u00c9cole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure in Paris, and Lehigh University in Pennsylvania studied ultracold potassium atoms cooled to near absolute zero. They found that when increasing the rate [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}