Temperature holds. There have not yet been successful experiments of this same kind that directly use the Fermi–Dirac distribution for thermometry, but perhaps that will be achieved in future. Temperature is one of the principal quantities in the study of thermodynamics. The Kelvin scale is called absolute for two reasons. One is that its formal character is independent of the properties of particular materials. The other reason is that its zero is in a sense absolute, in that it indicates absence of microscopic classical motion of the constituent particles of matter, so that they have a limiting specific heat of zero
Absolute zero if so, where the zero must be placed, was first addressed by the French physicist Guillaume Amontons in 1702, in connection with his improvements in the air-thermometer. His instrument indicated temperatures by the height at which a certain mass of air sustained a column of mercury—the volume, or "spring" of the air varying with temperature. Amontons therefore argued that the zero of his thermometer would be that temperature at which the spring of the air was reduced to nothing. He used a scale that marked the boiling-point of water at +73 and the melting-point of ice at +, so that