On Klemens and Lowenthal's Paper on Deviations from Matthiessen's Rule

Abstract

In a recent paper on deviations from Matthiessen's rule for platinum Klemens and Lowenthal (1961) classified the deviation patterns, calculated for a number of different platinum resistance thermometers, into three groups, and reported that only one of these groups followed the pattern predicted by Sondheimer and Wilson's (1947) two-band conduction theory. They suggested that if resistors belonging to one particular group (though no matter which group) were selected for use in low temperature platinum resistance thermometry then the resistance-temperature relationship could be expressed accurately by a relatively simple formula. We believe that Klemens and Lowenthal's method of classifying the resistors into groups is open to serious objection and that consequently some of their important conclusions are not necessarily valid.