Superconductivity

The book I read to research this post was Superconductivity A Very Short Introduction by Stephen J Blundell which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book is a good introduction to this subject and covers it in a lot of detail although some of it was a little difficult to understand. Superconductivity was discovered in Germany in 1911 and originally was called supraconductivity and the name was later changed. It was first discovered in mercury at extremely low temperatures. It is often found in substances that don’t normally conduct electricity and is when a current can be passed into a substance and because no heat or friction is generated it will continue to go round a circuit indefinitely. Sometimes pressure has to be added to a substance in addition to an extremely low temperature for it to work but quite a lot of substances particularly the transition metals have this ability. Some applications for this technology are Maglev Trains & MRI Scanners. When first discovered scientists were at a loss in understanding it and working out what it could be applied to. Eventually they hope that substances can be developed that can do this at room temperature & scientists have developed substances that will do it at 138 K which is on the Kelvin scale where 273 K is the freezing point of water. The Kelvin scale is the same as the Centigrade scale but starts at absolute zero which is the coldest possible temperature. I certainly enjoyed reading this book and it is an interesting subject.