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Quantum levitation

I know, I know. You’ve seen this. I’m slow to the party. But you know what? You can go to hell. This is too awesome not to put on The Black Laser.

DO YOU SEE THE THING!? IT’S FLOATING. SCIENCE IS AWESOME.

It’s Okay to Be Smart has a description of how it works:

What you start with is an inert disc, in this case a crystal sapphire wafer. That wafer is then coated with a superconductor called yttrium barium copper oxide. When superconductors get very cold (like liquid nitrogen cold) they conduct electricity with no loss of energy, which normal conducting materials like copper can’t do.

Superconductors hate magnetic fields (when cold enough), and normally would just repel the magnetic force and float in a wobbly fashion. But because the superconductor is so thin in this case, tiny imperfections allow some magnetic forces through. These little magnetic channels are called flux tubes:

The flux tubes cause the magnetic field to be “locked” in all three dimensions, which is why the disk remains in whatever position it starts in, levitating around the magnets.

Drier explanations here and here.

Charles sent me this video the other day and the thing we started talking about immediately was whether or not the floating would decay over time or if the super cooled slug would just fall when it warmed up so much that it was no longer able to maintain the quantum lock. And then we recognized that we were total nerds, but you knew that already, didn’t you?

One Comment

  1. GeneralMorgan5150 GeneralMorgan5150 October 24, 2011

    I wonder if you can coat them to game those flux holes in a way that makes them accelerate themselves in the field- Using the half life of the magnet as an accelerating force- Then charge the magnets with electricity to maintain their force or to increase their fields-  In other words. What happens when it get’s plugged in? What about a bimetallic superconductor where one side has a different superconducting coating to use it like a capacitor-  How much energy can you store and can you get to a point where only a small amount of electricity is used to peltier the disc.  Aka. zap it to keep it cool. Then exploit it for energy storage/spin it the faster it spins the more energy it holds-  Chuk in vacume.  zero out the air resistance. go nuts making it store juice. To get it out.. magnetically couple it to a gear on the outside of the vacume jar. meh. for like? fun fun flywheel energy storage. With an electrical and mechanical input output.  Shh.. it’ll never work. lol none of my ideas ever work. I don’t know nothin- what are you talking about. I’m a robot.

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