- Title: ISRAEL: Israeli physicists float concept for vehicle levitation
- Date: 14th November 2011
- Summary: TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (RECENT) (REUTERS) VIEW OF FROZEN PUCK FLOATING IN MID-AIR VARIOUS VIEWS OF PUCK TURNING ABOVE MAGNETIC SURFACE WIDE OF DOCTOR BOAZ ALMOG, RESEARCHER AT THE SCHOOL OF PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY AT TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY PLACING MAGNETIC SURFACE FROZEN PUCK TRAVELLING OVER A MAGNETIC TRACK VARIOUS VIEWS OF PUCK TRAVELLING IN MID-AIR WIDE OF DOCTOR BOAZ ALMOG,
- Embargoed: 29th November 2011 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Israel, Israel
- Country: Israel
- Topics: Technology,Transport
- Reuters ID: LVA76I5BEE4XMW6AW2D5N22GTXTZ
- Story Text: It's a phenomenon well-known to physicists but researchers at Tel Aviv University's School of Physics and Astronomy hope it will soon be well known to the general public as well.
In a demonstration, Dr Boaz Almog showed how a small puck can be controlled in mid-air over a magnetic field, a concept he believes could one day be applied to transportation systems.
While suspending the superconducting puck above a field of permanent magnetism, the magnetic field becomes locked inside the superconductor. This is what physicists call 'Quantum Levitation'.
A phenomena in the physics of superconductors, "Quantum Levitation" or "Quantum Trapping" is being studied by the team of researchers led by Professor Guy Deutscher, a leading physicist in the field of superconductivity at the school.
"It's a quantum phenomena that was not available to the pubic up till now because...what we demonstrate is a phenomena well known to physicists, it's the fact that the magnetic field is being trapped inside the superconducter. Now when you usually see a maglev or magnetiv levitation with superconducters you have other effects, you have the repelling of magnetic field, you have the Meissner effect; howvever, in our films, because they are very thin, you only see the trapping," said Dr Almog, a researcher in Professor Deutscher's team.
Research in the field of superconductivity, which began some 15 years ago, has led to the development of what Professor Deutscher's team calls superconductor wafers, pucks or discs. The next stage, Dr Almog says, will be optic fibers coated with superconductors.
"We developed a technique to coat sapphire in the form of discs, fibers, with a superconducter high tempature superconducter," said Dr Almog.
The Chinese-made crystal sapphire wafer is coated with a thin ceramic material that, when cooled below -185ºC (-301ºF) becomes a superconductor that conducts electricity without resistance and no energy loss.
The superconductor disc is suspended above rows of magnets, at a maximum height of five centimeters depending on the quality of the wafer, enabling it to move without any friction along the magnetic track, or rail.
The fictional hovering board used for personal transportation in the film 'Back to the Future' may not be a cinematic flight of fancy after all, says Dr Almog. He suggests the applications for Quantum Levitation might even stretch to the production of 'superconducter cars'.
"You can also use this levitation for transportation, for example, if you could find how to make large scale magnetic fields, for example, on the road then you you can just carry inside your car a superconducter and it will just levitate at a certain height over the road and you can just have frictionless motion".
What Professor Deutscher's team hopes to achieve in the near future is to make superconducter magnetics and superconducting wires, to transfer high current without any energy loss.
"The real aim that we are aspiring to reach is to make superconducter electric current flows for low temperatures, like for MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machines, all different superconducter magnetics in liquid helium where our material does not lose either heat nor current flow. The next stage will be to make wires with a company in the United States - a research group in the United States - that developed a technique to make wires with our unique sapphire and on that I will cover it, which will allow major current flows, 200-300 amper in each wire, that is the aim. You can also make very strong motors and many other things, from here it's open for crazy ideas," said Mishael Azoulay, Research and Devlopment technician at The School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University.
According to the scientosts, "crazy" ideas are where real innovation begins. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2016. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None