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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Aug 15.
Published in final edited form as: Biochim Biophys Acta. 2008 Oct 1;1788(1):53–63. doi: 10.1016/j.bbamem.2008.09.010

Figure 2.

Figure 2

(A) At room temperature, a glass tube filled with pressurized carbon dioxide contains liquid CO2 and vapor. A meniscus is clearly visible. Only the interior of the tube is shown. (B) The meniscus disappears when temperature is raised to the critical point. The observed cloudiness results from critical opalescence. (C) Above the critical temperature, the entire tube is filled with a single fluid phase. (D–F) The same behavior is captured by a simulation of the two-dimensional Ising model conducted far below (D), at (E), and far above (F) its critical temperature. The simulation was conducted as in (12) by Marcus Collins.