High Pressure:One of the many Tools to Study Material Properties at Extreme Conditions

High pressure is a powerful and clean variable, which when applied can bring about large changes in structure and properties of materials. It can be used to simulate the conditions found deep inside the earth or in different planetary interiors. It is widely used in chemical industry, especially when the chemical reaction products have lower volumes than the initial reactants, and also in the food preservation industry, where it ensures that aromas and flavours are not lost even after preservation. Materials under pressure can be studied both theoretically and experimentally. In this article apart from discussing how to set up a basic high pressure experiment using the DAC, some examples have been elaborated to show how both experiments and theory complement each other and both put together can help in a deeper understanding of the changes brought about by application of high pressure.