• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Superconductivity and Electrical Resistance

jptdrake

New Blood
J
Joined
Jun 27, 2009
Messages
9
I have seen many references that show superconductivity being the specific elimination (i.e. zero) of electrical resistance.

My question is: how it is possible to eliminate electrical resistance?
 
The material is conditioned in such a way so as not to absorb any kinetic energy from the electrons flowing through the lattice. No converting kinetic energy from electrons to atoms, no additional atomic vibrations (heat), no resistance.

The hard part is in the "conditioning".
 
Last edited:
Electrical resistance is the result of electrons scattering off atoms in the conductor. An electron in a high energy state hits an atom, loses some energy and goes into a low energy state. To eliminate resistance, you simply need to make it so there are no low energy states the electron can go into.

'But can't the electron always just come to rest?' you ask. Nope. Electrons obey the Pauli exclusion principle, and so can't enter into a state if another electron already occupies it. So if all the lower energy states are already occupied by electrons, then a moving electron simply can't hit an atom and slow down. Superconductors have states like that.

In regular conductors, where the electrons more or less act independently of each other, a current is only possible by boosting a low energy electron into a higher energy state. This means that there's always a low energy state available, and there's always resistance. As a side note, in a perfect conductor crystal at absolute zero, there would also be zero resistance, simply because the electrons can move through the crystal lattice without hitting anything: as a result, at low temperatures resistance is mostly due to impurities. This would not be superconductivity, just really good regular conductivity.
 
Superconductivity is not simply the absence of any electrical resistance. A material with only that property is known as an ideal or perfect conductor. A superconductor also exhibits the Meissner effect, which is also a clue to the mechanism behind superconductivity. It is interesting to note that while there are a good number of superconductors, there are no known perfect conductors (zero resistance but no Meissner effect).
 
I had this nagging feeling back in the 1980s that superconductivity is related to mass in such a way that when combined with an external magnetic field, might be used to reduce the apparent mass of an object and move it around. I posed this question in a chat forum to some online nerds around 1990, and they just laughed. But later I heard some Norweigians or Swedes actually did the experiment I had suggested and found that the weight of a superconducting magnet can actually be reduced by rotating it, apparently giving it some anti-gravity properties. So someone in some black-ops project has probably turned this into who knows what by now.
 
ufology said:
I had this nagging feeling back in the 1980s that superconductivity is related to mass in such a way that when combined with an external magnetic field, might be used to reduce the apparent mass of an object and move it around. I posed this question in a chat forum to some online nerds around 1990, and they just laughed. But later I heard some Norweigians or Swedes actually did the experiment I had suggested and found that the weight of a superconducting magnet can actually be reduced by rotating it, apparently giving it some anti-gravity properties. So someone in some black-ops project has probably turned this into who knows what by now.
Click to expand...

Or, the results were bunk, and nothing came of it.

That's my guess.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom