Friday, October 3, 2008

Levitation: An example of Super-conductivity



The above video shows the levitation effect observed when the magnetic field is cooled below its critical point. Also known as Meissner effect.
Figure below shows the Meissner effect in which the super conductor cooled below the critical temperature end up repelling all the magnetic field lines.

Last semester, I had to teach a lab with this one as an example. Though, determining the critical point for the superconducting material was horribly hard (as they felt). The students really had fun to watch the effect. They were interested in what caused that effect and some other examples like floating train simply amazed them.
To me this is one of the beauty of Physics education, that student can feel gravitated towards such an abstract subject.
[Figure adopted from wikipedia. ]

1 comment:

  1. I think I had already watched this video. This is really cool. Such videos help students to develop interest in Sciences-the study of nature. For some students its very difficult to understand the Science. If you show some common and easy/simple example, then they will understand what it is. Thank you for posting such educational video. Keep it up.

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