Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Demonstrate Quantum Levitation
UnknownSoldier writes "Wired reports that researchers at Tel Aviv University have discovered you can 'lock' a magnetic field into place with a superconductor. They have a very cool demonstration of a frozen puck and some of the neat things you can do with it while its orientation remains locked but its location is movable. Might we someday see high speed trains that will be 'impossible' to tip over, or a new generation of batteries with this technology?"
SUPERCONDUCTOR not semiconductor !
Try this longer video instead. It has construction details, explanations, double levitation etc.
Also, "semiconductor"? Jeez, that is a lame mistake even by Slashdot standards!
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
This is not the Meissner effect! If it were you wouldn't be able to do the stunt where they move the disk to a different angle and it stays there. This is more subtle. The Meissner effect involves superconductors not letting magnetic field lines pass through the superconductor. This involves special superconductors that allow magnetic field lines to pass through but make the field lines get trapped in imperfections in the superconductor. The name of this effect is "flux pinning" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_pinning. Here is the website of the group who made this video where they explain it http://www.quantumlevitation.com/levitation/Quantum_Levitation.html
I remember it well, as I was dating a physicist at the time.
please become a meme, please become a meme...
every physics student gets a demonstration of this effect in his solid state physics lecture. But usually the superconductor is rather small and is put into a small matchbox type car to drive it around a track. Here they used a relatively large and bulky superconducting disk, so the orientation locking is more visible. Although not new, it never gets old and I'm always fascinated by it. Just don't use the word "discovery" here!