WEBVTT - It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's a Superconductor 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:07.520 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from stuff 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:14.920 works dot com. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:19.480 I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren and we have a cool, 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:23.640 super cool episode, but it has to be super cool 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:28.760 for most applications. We're talking about superconductors today. Now, in 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:31.639 order to talk about superconductors, really we thought it was 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:37.639 necessary to kind of backtrack and talk about electronics and electricity. Yeah, 0:00:37.760 --> 0:00:41.800 because to understand why superconductors are so amazing, you first 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:45.880 have to have that that basic information about electronics in general. 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:51.440 So here's a fundamental problem with electronics, with with any 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:54.240 sort of circuitry, with any kind of system. Really, it's 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:57.560 not just electronics. That's that's one way we can look 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:00.360 at it. But there's this problem where you pour energy 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:04.000 into a system and because of things like entropy, the 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:06.959 output you get is less than the energy you put in. Now, 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:11.640 of course we know we cannot create or destroy energy, correct, Yeah, 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:14.160 it's one of those laws of thermodynamics, and if you 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:17.000 try and break them, then the thermodynamics police show up. 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:20.319 So actually it just means that you cannot break that law. 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:22.759 So if you can't break that law, if you pour 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:25.559 energy into a system and you're not getting as much 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:28.720 output as you're getting input. It's because you're losing energy 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:34.480 through some other action. Normally in almost every system that 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:38.479 we're really familiar with, that's heat. Right. Heat becomes a byproduct. 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:41.600 Energy goes to produce heat, which means that whatever you 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:44.800 were trying to do is slightly less effective than what 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:47.520 you had intended. So we see this with things like 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:51.000 car engines are a great example. You pour in fuel, 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:54.760 the engine burns up the fuel and converts that into power, 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:56.960 but you don't get as much power out as you're 0:01:56.960 --> 0:01:59.880 getting energy in from the source of that fuel. So 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:02.080 the same sort of thing is true with electronics. And 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:04.760 in this case, the thing we talk about when we're 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:09.160 talking about losing energy is called resistance. That's the resistance 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:13.200 of any particular material to the flow of electricity through 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:17.800 that material. So with that basic information there, now we're 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:22.560 gonna really dive into the very very basic building blocks 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:25.560 of electronics. Yes, because the thing is that superconductors lose 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:30.120 no energy to resistance, right, They have no resistance exactly. However, 0:02:30.120 --> 0:02:33.560 they require extraordinarily cold temperatures like on the magnitude of 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:37.520 thirty nine kelvin's which is that's cold. Yeah, when you remember, 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:42.760 zero kelvin is zero molecular movement. That's absolute zero. That's 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:44.480 that's like if you were to go into the deepest 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:48.080 reaches of space and there are no molecules moving around, 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:52.560 everything is perfectly still. That's zero. Kelvin is equivalent to 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:57.239 negative two and thirty four degrees celsius or negative eighty 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:00.400 nine degrees fahrenheit. Right, So that's that's that's pretty cold. 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:04.000 But to understand again about resistance, let's let's take this 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:08.200 this this tour through the building blocks of electronics. So, now, 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:14.160 the early early understanding we had about electricity, uh gave 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:17.440 us some ideas that we kind of have to work 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:22.080 around these days. Like specifically, the idea of current. Current 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:25.120 is a confusing thing for someone who has doesn't understand 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:29.240 electricity because it run the direction of current runs counter 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:31.919 to the actual flow of electrons. Right when all of 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:34.359 these terms were being created, we didn't know as much 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:37.880 about sub atomic particles a k a. Much at all 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:42.360 anything so so do today. So before we understood anything 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:46.960 about electricity, we began to learn things about about charge 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:50.520 and the idea of opposite charges attracting one another and 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:54.880 like charges repelling one another. Now we could have called 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:58.440 electrons positive charge. We could have done that. There's no 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:01.160 reason why we would have said all tron's are negatively charged. 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:04.680 It's just a word, right, But that was what was 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.240 considered a negative charge, and then you would have the 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:09.960 opposite would obviously be a positive charge. You know, we 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:12.160 could have called these left and right, or are up 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:16.960 and down or anything really, but banana and oboes. Everyone 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:20.600 knows the obo is nature's opposite to the banana. So 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:24.160 the the these opposite charges, the negative and the positive, 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:28.360 attract one another. Now, if you were to have a 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:33.120 negatively charged material and a positively charged material, uh, you know, 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:37.040 within the same general area of each other, the potential 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:42.240 that separated those opposite electric charges would be called voltage, 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:45.120 all right. So that's when someone's talking about voltage, they're 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:48.760 talking about this potential that's separating the opposite electric charges, 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:51.279 and it's it's the capacity that they would have for 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:56.320 doing work if those opposite charges were connected together somehow. 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:58.920 So you would have to have something that would allow 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:03.320 these charge jes to mix together. So back in the 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:06.880 early days of electricity, before we really understood the mechanics 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:08.960 of it, you would think that all right, well, all 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:13.200 the positively charged particles would leap over to the negative 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:15.120 side and the negative charge particles would lead to the 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:19.000 positive side until the charges had equalized. Right, And even 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:22.640 if you had one material that was more negatively charged 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:26.080 than the other material was positively charged, the actual negative 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:29.720 charge would also even out eventually, like omosis, it would 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:31.599 kind of work itself out, so you would you would 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:34.320 end up with a larger amount of material that had 0:05:34.440 --> 0:05:37.000 a negative charge. It would just be a lower negative 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:40.680 charge than the original material you started with. Right. So 0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:44.640 here we were still thinking about this as these little 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:47.679 charged bodies, these charged particles, both of positive and negative 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:52.400 zipping across um and you can you can measure voltage 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:56.440 by measuring the the two different points. So for example, 0:05:57.200 --> 0:06:00.440 if you have one on the positive ode and one 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:03.359 of the electric node are a negative node rather, you 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:05.640 then look at those two contact points. That's where you 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:08.200 get your voltage. If you're using the same point of 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:12.359 contact and you're checking different other electrodes, uh that same 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:14.760 contact though contact you're using for all of them, we 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:19.920 usually call the ground right, that's the ground contact. Now, 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:24.719 a material that does conduct electricity is called a conductor 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:28.320 for that very reason, right convenient and there, and there 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:30.440 are some materials that are very good conductors. A lot 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:33.120 of the metals, for example, are great conductors. How how 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:36.880 conductive material is depends on how easily it's component atoms 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:40.920 donate electrons, right right. You need to have these free electrons. 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:45.160 Free electrons are this when you have an atom. Obviously 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:47.640 you have an electron shell or several shells, depending on 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:52.080 how how large the atomist and uh, and if you 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:55.000 have free electrons that aren't tied down to anything on 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:58.960 the outer shells, then that allows electricity to pass more 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:01.840 freely because what happens is a new electron comes in. 0:07:02.240 --> 0:07:04.800 This is oversimplifying, but a new electron comes in and 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:07.680 essentially bunks out one of the other electrons in that 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:11.240 outer shell, which then will bonk out one further down 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:14.440 the line. So if you've got a lot of free electrons, 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:17.880 then that allows this this passage to happen fairly easily. 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:21.840 And UH, that's what allows you to connect these these 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:27.080 differently charged UH materials to equal that out. We call 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:30.680 this current. But again, the current is the idea of 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:35.040 positively charged particles passing from one material to the other. 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.640 As we learned later, it's actually electrons that are passing through, 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:43.400 not positive charges. But we we consider stuck with that 0:07:43.640 --> 0:07:47.080 the terminology which means which means that when you say current, 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:50.280 you're actually talking about the opposite direction as what the 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:53.680 electrons are really going through. So if you're talking about 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:57.240 a circuit's current, you are looking at it going positive 0:07:57.240 --> 0:08:00.560 to negative, when in reality the electrons are going negative positive, 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:03.720 basically proving that Benjamin Franklin was not a time traveler, 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:06.400 right right, Yeah, there are a lot of jokes on 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:09.080 the Internet saying that we have Benjamin Franklin to blame 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:12.920 for this misunderstanding. That again is oversimplifying it. Franklin was 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:19.360 one of but not the only. Yeah kind of point. Yeah, 0:08:19.360 --> 0:08:22.320 he was like the mascot for electricity before we knew 0:08:22.320 --> 0:08:25.120 what we could do with it. Now, current we measure 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:28.320 in ampiers or amps and an emperor is the rate 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:32.040 of flow of one coolmb of charge in one second 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:35.800 past some given point. And so that raises the question, 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:39.320 what is a coolmb. It's a whole bunch of charge. Yeah, 0:08:39.360 --> 0:08:41.120 it's a lot of charge. It's actually quite a bit 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:44.360 of charge. But you know, we won't boil. It's not 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:48.400 technically important, no, not for not for this discussion, but 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:51.319 just know that it's a lot of charge. So if 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:53.280 you hear someone talking about a cool lomb, that's a 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:56.400 lot of charge. Current of course does have the direction 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:58.480 as the flow of positive charges. You can think of 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:02.920 positive charge in a way as vacancies holes, positive holes 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:06.440 that could accept an electron. Right, because if if you 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:09.040 have even if you have a build up of negative particles, 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:13.480 if there's no positively charged part if there's no if aren't, 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:17.839 if there are no vacancies at another point, then those 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:20.040 that charge is just gonna keep building up. It doesn't 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:24.400 the electrons and nowhere to right, So that brings us 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:27.320 to the concept of an insulator. Now, an insulator is 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:29.240 sort of the opposite of a conductor. This is a 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:34.120 material that charge cannot flow through those those component atoms 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:37.240 at their their electrons just want to stay put. Yeah, yeah, 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:41.719 they usually the usually you don't have any free electrons 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:45.320 on the outside. They're all uh, they're all bonded together. 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:49.080 So that means that an incoming electron has nowhere to go. 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:52.480 So with nowhere to go, then this stuff just halts 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:55.760 the flow of electricity, and this includes things like air 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:58.920 is an insulator. Now, granted, if you were to pour 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:01.400 enough energy into air, you could ionize it and then 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:04.960 it becomes a conductor. But you have to pour energy 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:06.920 into air for that to happen. That's what happens with 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:10.480 lightning strikes, that kind of thing. Otherwise it's more commonly 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:11.920 it's it's it's all those things you know, like like 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:18.520 rubber or glass, exactly exactly. Now we've covered conductors, we've 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:23.679 covered insulators. That brings us to semi conductors. Now, this 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:26.520 is a term that a lot of people are familiar 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:29.280 with because semiconductors we talk about that all the time. 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:33.680 We talk about electronics like microprocessors, semiconductor plants, or a 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:37.720 silicon wafer. That's what a silicon chip that has a 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:42.400 microprocessor on it. So what exactly is a semiconductor, Well, 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:44.520 if you're looking at the name, it kind of gives 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:46.800 it away. It's a material that can act like a 0:10:47.320 --> 0:10:52.480 conductor or connect like an insulator. Now, naturally, if you 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:55.360 were to just make a if you were to make 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:58.760 like a wafer of silicon, it was pure silicon, it 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:01.240 would be an insulator. But because those those electrons are 0:11:01.240 --> 0:11:04.719 all tied up, right, so you can't push more electrons 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:08.400 through it. However, if you were to start introducing impurities 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:11.360 into the silicon on purpose, this isn't right right right, Yeah, 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:14.280 Like I like phosphorus or boron are two typical ones exactly. 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:17.439 Then you are doing a process that's called doping, and 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:21.040 the semiconductor business that's not a bad thing. You won't 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:23.600 get thrown out the Hall of Fame of Semiconductors for doping. 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:28.120 In fact, doping is necessary to make a semiconductor work. Now, 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:32.240 if you were to dope a semiconductor with uh atoms 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:36.560 that have extra electrons, extra being free electrons and that 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:39.199 that outer shell, I don't mean that they're actually carrying 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:44.680 around more electronic electrons, right, yeah, like phosphorus exactly electrons. 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:47.080 Phosphorus has a free electrons, then you would get what 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:51.400 it's called in type semiconductor material because it has more 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:59.040 negatively charged particles. Now, boron has what we would call 0:11:59.200 --> 0:12:02.960 vacancies or holes that what electrons could flow into. So 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:06.120 if you put boron, if you introduce boron into silicon, 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:11.600 it would have availability to accept electrons. A positively charged 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:14.880 or P type exactly. And if you were to take 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:18.480 both of these types of doping and apply them to 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:22.000 one silicon wafer, so that let's just say on the 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:25.480 left side you have N type silicon and on the 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:29.319 right side of P type silicon, that would allow electrons 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:33.800 to flow across in the direction from negative to positive. Correct, correct, 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:37.040 And it would prevent the flow of electrons to go 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:40.160 from positive to negative because again those negative electrons in 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:44.800 the N type silicon will will repel any incoming electrons. 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:49.640 This is the basis of a very specific type of 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:53.800 electronic component called the diode. Diodes are important. They're kind 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:58.600 of a one way street in electronics and uh. And 0:12:58.840 --> 0:13:00.720 one of the reasons this is in orton is when 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:05.400 you have something like alternating current. Alternating current, it's exactly 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:08.800 what sounds like. It alternates direction. Remember I was saying before. 0:13:08.880 --> 0:13:13.079 Current is the flow of positive charge in a circuit. 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:15.440 If you have alternating current running through it, then that 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:17.560 current is running one way and then the other way, 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:21.319 and it alternates at thousands of times per second. We 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:24.439 call it hurts. That those cycles per second, So it's 0:13:24.480 --> 0:13:27.520 usually like twenty hurts, so twenty thousand times a second. 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:30.480 It's going pooh back and forth. Now I like that 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:34.840 sound effect. Yeah, that's the sound of electrons just zig zagging. 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:40.679 But a lot of our electronics don't run on alternating current. 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:44.360 They need to run on direct current. So diodes are 0:13:44.440 --> 0:13:48.199 a good way of addressing that because they will only 0:13:48.280 --> 0:13:52.360 allow charge to pass through in one direction. So even 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:54.400 if you have an alternating current, then it's going to 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:57.679 prevent current from passing through one way and allow it 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:00.480 to pass through the other way. That's one of the 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:04.800 ways we use to to transform alternating current into direct current. 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:07.200 So right, and this problem is why you get those 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:11.080 little um, those little boxes on your electric plugs to 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:15.160 transform the alternating current coming in through your through your 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:20.320 system to be yeah, through through that the pluggy thing, outlets, outlets. 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:23.440 It's been a long day, it has, it has. I'm 0:14:23.520 --> 0:14:29.000 giggling more than usual. We've been in a meeting for 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:32.240 a long long time. If you need to know how long. 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:36.040 Just a quick aside, check out Josh and Chuck's series 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:39.440 Trapped in a Meeting. It's very good. It's very funny, 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:42.640 and it's very real. It's it's so real, it's it's 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:45.360 it's my video debut. So check that out. That's right. 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:49.120 You can see Lauren blocking me for almost every episode. 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:51.080 I can just see like either the front of my 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:53.200 face or the back of my head and almost every shot. 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:57.160 But uh, that's just me complaining. That's fine. So let's 0:14:57.160 --> 0:15:00.480 move on to we we've we mentioned resistance. Resist is 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:04.720 this property that resists the flow of a charge, and 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:07.680 it depends on the material of the conductor, uh and 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:11.280 the flaws that that conductor might have that create resistance. Uh. 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:14.720 The gauge of the conductor, So example, the gauge of wire. 0:15:15.120 --> 0:15:17.040 So how how much of it there is? Right, The 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:20.080 thinner the wire, the greater the resistance in general, So 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:23.160 if you're talking about copper wire and you're talking about 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:27.440 smaller gauges which are actually larger wires. I don't know 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:30.479 why that is. I'm sure someone out there understands why 0:15:30.640 --> 0:15:35.120 the gauge and size are inversely related aperture related things. 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:37.720 There's something out there, I'm sure, and I bet I 0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:39.560 could have found it out easily if I looked it up. 0:15:39.560 --> 0:15:41.360 I didn't think too, but I'm sure some of our 0:15:41.400 --> 0:15:45.600 electronic attrician friends out there know exactly why. Anyway, the 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:50.440 larger the diameter of the wire, the lower the resistance. Uh. 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:53.200 And the other thing is the temperature of the material itself. 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:55.680 In fact, if you lower the temperature of the material, 0:15:56.720 --> 0:16:01.800 then you can decrease the resistance. That's the varying basis. 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:06.680 And and that that that temperature comes in because uh, 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.320 you know, he heat makes atoms bang around into each 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:14.560 other more, which which is part of what causes resistance. 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:19.040 And and on the flip side, resistance causes heat. Right, 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:22.000 those atoms are starting to bang around. That actually creates heat. 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:25.720 It's essentially friction on an atomic level or sub atomic 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:29.480 level because you're talking about electrons, but it still creates heat. 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:32.120 And that's where you get this loss of energy in 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:34.800 your system or loss of output where you're not really 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:37.440 losing energy in the sense that you know it's still 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:40.240 going somewhere, it's just no longer contained within the system 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:42.320 that you have created. Right. So what does Owns law 0:16:42.360 --> 0:16:45.680 have to do? Right? Ohms law is the relationship between 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:49.920 voltage and resistance. All right, So it is explained as 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:56.320 voltage equals current times resistance, or because we can switch 0:16:56.360 --> 0:17:01.120 these around, current equals voltage divided by resistance. So you 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:04.760 look at the voltage across whatever the resistor itself is, 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:08.399 whether it's a specific component in electronic circuit or the 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:12.480 overall circuit or just a wire. And uh, that way, 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:14.679 you can if you know the voltage and the current, 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:17.000 you can determine what the resistance is. Actually, as long 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:19.280 as you know any of those two, you can determine 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:21.399 the third because you know what how they relate to 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:26.080 one another. UM. Now, on top of all of this, 0:17:26.240 --> 0:17:28.840 we then have the concept of power. This is that 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:32.560 output that you're getting, and power is we measure that 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:37.240 in watt's w A T T S and power released 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:41.440 into a resistor equals the voltage times the current or 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:47.760 voltage squared divided by resistance or current squared multiplied by resistance. 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:52.560 The point we're getting to is that these basic concepts 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:56.440 of electronics are all very very closely related to one another, 0:17:56.720 --> 0:17:59.800 and the more we understand about them, the greater potential 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:03.960 we have to UH creating new stuff that really takes 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:09.000 advantage of Right, it was our eventual understanding of these 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:11.879 basic principles that has allowed us to kind of break 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:16.879 the physics that that or or twinge the physics them. 0:18:17.320 --> 0:18:21.480 What happened was we understood things how we we understood 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:27.520 how things worked and kind of our normal, under normal 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:32.520 room temperature situation. Because because you know, early early people 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:38.480 working in electronics, early people early electronics work, they were 0:18:38.480 --> 0:18:41.680 trying to plug in their xbox. No. No, the people 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:43.919 who are working on electricity, very early on, when we 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:47.199 were just learning about the principles of electricity and and 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:51.280 what it is, how these different elements relate to one another, 0:18:52.080 --> 0:18:57.040 they didn't necessarily have the capacity to alter things enough 0:18:57.119 --> 0:18:59.600 to really see like, gosh, what would happen if we 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:02.719 super cool super cool that. Yeah, they didn't have the 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:05.439 ability to do it early early on, but it wasn't 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:09.879 too late when they started to to really experiment with it. 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:13.520 But we'll get into that alright. So that is our 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:18.399 down and dirty basic electronics coverage there, and now we 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:22.280 can actually look at super conductors and explain exactly what 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:25.280 they are, how they work, and why they're so amazing. 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:28.560 So before we jump into that, let's take a very 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:32.920 quick break to thank our sponsor a right back to superconductors. 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:38.560 So we've covered conductors, insulators, we've covered semiconductors, we've heard 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:42.480 about resistance. What exactly is a superconductor? All right? Technically 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:47.240 this is some sort of material that will conduct electricity 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:51.840 without resistance below a certain temperature, and you don't want 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:54.480 that resistance obviously, because again you have that loss of energy. 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:56.560 You wanted to be as efficient as possible. So if 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:00.320 you could find a material that does not convert any 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:04.359 of that energy into heat and it's all output, then 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:08.080 you've just dramatically increased the efficiency of your system. It's 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:11.120 about as close to perpetual motion as we can ever 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:14.000 expect to get, which is really exciting, you know, for 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:16.360 cost purposes and all kinds of all kinds of fun 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:18.520 research bits which will get into in a minute sure. 0:20:18.600 --> 0:20:22.120 And uh. In fact, the according to superconductors dot org, 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:24.960 which has a lot of really fun information about superconductors. 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:29.439 By the way, UH, scientists call it a quote macroscopic 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:34.640 quantum phenomenon in the quote, which is huge literally because 0:20:34.640 --> 0:20:37.560 you're talking about macroscopic But but that's the things that 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:41.400 quantum phenomena. We normally think of quantum mechanics quantum phenomena 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:45.159 as happening on a subatomic scale, right, so small that 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:48.320 even our most powerful light microscope couldn't see it. You'd 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:51.600 have to use something like an electron telling microscope it's 0:20:51.640 --> 0:20:55.040 highly theoretical and and all very tricky. It's really interesting 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:57.120 because our laws of physics as we know it start 0:20:57.160 --> 0:21:00.280 breaking down at that point. But right, but it's really 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:02.440 hard to figure out what's going on there because it's 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:05.399 so darn tiny. Right, Yeah, it's it's a totally different 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:07.399 set of rules than what we're used to on the 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:11.080 classic level. And to have something on the macroscopic level 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:15.280 that seems to behave under these quantum phenomena is pretty amazing. 0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:17.840 So exactly what's going on, Well, let's go back a 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:21.840 little bit and look at the history of learning about this. Right, so, 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:26.080 way back in nineteen eleven, a Dutch physicist whose name 0:21:26.160 --> 0:21:28.480 I am now going to butcher, And I apologize to 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:31.560 anyone out there who is from the Netherlands who's going 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:37.760 to WinCE at everything. I say, um, hi k Kummerling 0:21:38.119 --> 0:21:40.960 on this of Leighton University, and I bet it's Laden 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:43.080 University too, as soon as I say it's Laden because 0:21:43.160 --> 0:21:49.679 Laden jars. But anyway, Uh, this physicist discovered super conductivity, 0:21:49.760 --> 0:21:51.600 or at least observed it for the first time as 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:55.439 far as we know, looking at solid mercury. They he 0:21:55.480 --> 0:21:58.879 had made a solid mercury wire and cooled it to 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:03.360 the temperature of a about four kelvin using liquid helium, 0:22:03.440 --> 0:22:06.080 and that is about negative four hundred fifty two degrees 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:09.040 fahrenheit or negative two hundred sixty nine degrees celsius. And 0:22:09.040 --> 0:22:12.720 he noticed that when he did this, its resistance suddenly disappeared. Right, 0:22:12.800 --> 0:22:15.720 So this was interesting. And this is the sort of 0:22:15.760 --> 0:22:19.720 thing that I thought I always imagined scientists doing there, 0:22:20.280 --> 0:22:22.680 sitting around the lab and just saying, huh, I got 0:22:22.680 --> 0:22:25.040 this stuff. I wonder what happens if I do X 0:22:25.119 --> 0:22:28.679 to it. You know, let's drop the temperature down to 0:22:29.040 --> 0:22:32.560 almost absolute zero and see if that doesn't anything interesting. Uh. 0:22:32.720 --> 0:22:34.560 I know it's way more complicated than that, but I 0:22:34.720 --> 0:22:37.320 like to think that that's what scientists are doing. Yeah, 0:22:37.440 --> 0:22:39.399 And and what's what was really going on there was 0:22:39.440 --> 0:22:45.320 that um, the mercury at that temperature underwent a phase transition. UM. 0:22:45.440 --> 0:22:47.520 But we'll get more into that in a second, right, 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:49.720 So then we skip ahead a little bit. That was 0:22:49.800 --> 0:22:55.040 nineteen eleven and nineteen thirty three some German researchers Walter Meisner, 0:22:55.560 --> 0:22:59.760 not the famed theater mentor, because I have a lot 0:22:59.760 --> 0:23:04.119 of my Eisner technique different shiffering Guy Nicer and Robert 0:23:04.160 --> 0:23:08.800 Oceanfeld discovered that a super conducting material will repel a 0:23:08.880 --> 0:23:13.200 magnetic field. Now, this is super cool as well. I 0:23:13.920 --> 0:23:16.000 keep using that I didn't mean to, and I should 0:23:16.000 --> 0:23:19.240 have caught myself. It's it's really interesting. It's really interesting. 0:23:19.520 --> 0:23:21.959 If you've ever seen there's lots of videos on YouTube, 0:23:22.040 --> 0:23:26.400 right of people using magnets and super cooled super conductor 0:23:26.480 --> 0:23:31.520 material and they can lock the material in a levitating 0:23:31.600 --> 0:23:36.080 state above the magnet, right. Or sometimes they have a 0:23:36.800 --> 0:23:40.280 super conducting bass that is super cooled and then they 0:23:40.280 --> 0:23:42.600 put a magnet on top of it and it seems 0:23:42.640 --> 0:23:45.080 to just hang in the air. Now, technically, if you 0:23:45.160 --> 0:23:47.679 if you actually listen to the physicists who talked about this, 0:23:47.680 --> 0:23:52.000 there's a great Ted talk where a guy demonstrates this eleven. 0:23:52.080 --> 0:23:54.920 It's will link it on social I mean everyone's seen it, yeah, 0:23:54.920 --> 0:23:56.960 but we'll we'll link it anyway because it's still fun 0:23:56.960 --> 0:24:01.680 to watch. Uh. He explains that technically it's not levitation, 0:24:01.800 --> 0:24:05.560 it's what they call quantum lock. Uh, And so it's 0:24:05.560 --> 0:24:07.800