Liquid helium physicist Richard Feynman. Liquid helium At standard pressure, the chemical element helium exists in a liquid form only at the extremely low temperature of −270 °C (about 4 K or −452.2 °F). Its boiling point and critical point depend on which isotope of helium is present: the common isotope helium-4 or the rare isotope helium-3. These are the only two stable isotopes of helium. See the table below for the values of these physical quantities. The density of liquid helium-4 at its boiling point and a pressure of one atmosphere (101.3 kilopascals) is about 0.125 grams per cm, or about
Boiling-point elevation formula above, the boiling-point elevation can in principle be used to measure the degree of dissociation or the molar mass of the solute. This kind of measurement is called ebullioscopy (Greek "boiling-viewing"). However, since superheating is difficult to avoid, precise "ΔT" measurements are difficult to carry out, which was partly overcome by the invention of the Beckmann thermometer. Furthermore, the cryoscopic constant that determines freezing-point depression is larger than the ebullioscopic constant, and since the freezing point is often easier to measure with precision, it is more common to use cryoscopy. Among many urban legends related to the effect of