Critical Opalescence

If you look at a normally clear gas/liquid at the critical point, something interesting happens – the gas becomes milky, cloudy.

Critical opalescence in carbon dioxide.

So what? Doesn’t the steam coming off of boiling water look milky?

Not the steam – that milky-ness actually comes from little water droplets – liquid water – condensing over the water – making a little cloud. This is something different.
Look in the picture of carbon dioxide above and at the critical point – can you see a boundary between the liquid and gaseous states? NO! It’s all the same.

Ask yourself...

  • Describe what happens in the pictures of the carbon dioxide as you lower the temperature from super(above)critical to sub(below)critical.
  • Click here to hide the answer.

    What’s going on?

    The full answer to this question took over a century (and a few Nobel prizes) to develop. BUT we can get a basic idea pretty quickly.