THE COLDEST ROOM.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 53, Issue 151, 7 April 1933, Page 3

THE COLDEST ROOM.

FIFTY DEGREES OF FROST. R ESEARCH WORK AT CAMBRIDGE The coldest room in the world. Where is it? It is ,believe it or not, says a writer in the “Daily Express” only fifty miles from London, and within the walls of Cambridge University,' in a building, pleasantly warmed by central heating, known as the Cambridge low temperature research station. Low temperature is the right word. The enow huts of Eskimos are sunparlours compared with this room. A hundred degrees of frost is the lowest to which the mercury has so far been allowed to drop. Cold of this intensity is sometimes found at the Poles but nowhere else. A glass of water freezes before one can drink it. The writer recently explored these synthetic “Polar regions,” where scientists clad like Arctic explorers carry out delicate microscopic work, They are trying to solve one of the world’s great test problems—how to keep food fresh, palatable and nutritive while being transported from one side of the globe to the other. It was a fairy sight, the walls and roof, encrusted with glistening frost, and long, crystal-clear icicles hanging like stalactites in a cavern. The temperature, it was stated, was not really cold—only minus fifty degrees equal to some of the coldest spots in Siberia. The Cambridge low temperature research station is one of the principle organisations of the British Goyernment’is Food Investigation Department. At the head of the research station is Sir William Hardy, F.R.S., who is Director of the Food Investigation Department. One great problem is that of preserving Australian and New Zealand beef, which, unlike Argentine beef, cannot be transported in a merely chilled state owing to the greater period of transportation. The research station, ocupying a four-storey brick building in the enclosure of Pembroke College, has no counterpart in any other country. “To carry out accurate microscopic work in even ten degrees of frost is a very trying experience,” said a member of the staff. “Where the temperature is fifty degrees it is a real hardship. About ten minutes is the limit that can be endured. No one has ever so far suffered from frost-bite. He would not he allowed to stay in long enough for that.”