WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's a Superconductor 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.760 Welcome to text Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:14.360 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:17.079 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:20.160 and I love all things tech, and today we're going 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:23.040 to listen to another tech Stuff classic episode. This episode 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:27.360 originally published on June five, two thousand thirteen, and it 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:30.040 has the title It's a bird, it's a plane, It's 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:34.120 a superconductor. Yep, we're gonna talk about superconductors, those super 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:37.239 cool literally pieces of technology that allow us to do 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:41.479 all sorts of really advanced stuff. I hope you guys enjoy. 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:47.440 Let's listen in. So, here's a fundamental problem with electronics, 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:50.760 with with any sort of circuitry, with any kind of system. Really, 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:54.080 it's not just electronics. That's that's one way we can 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:56.560 look at it. But there's this problem where you pour 0:00:56.720 --> 0:00:59.880 energy into a system and because of things like entropy, 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:03.120 the output you get is less than the energy you 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:05.640 put in. Now, of course, we know we cannot create 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:09.199 or destroy energy, correct, Yeah, it's one of those laws 0:01:09.200 --> 0:01:12.080 of thermodynamics, and if you try and break them, then 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:15.600 the thermodynamics police show up. So actually, it just means 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:18.440 that you cannot break that law. So if you can't 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:20.960 break that law, if you pour energy into a system 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:24.000 and you're not getting as much output as you're getting input, 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:28.680 it's because you're losing energy through some other action. Normally 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:33.800 in almost every system that we're really familiar with, that's heat. Right, 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:37.440 Heat becomes a byproduct. Energy goes to produce heat, which 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:40.360 means that whatever you were trying to do is slightly 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:43.440 less effective than what you had intended. So we see 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:46.720 this with things like car engines are a great example. 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:49.880 You pour in fuel, the engine burns up the fuel 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:52.600 and converts that into power, but you don't get as 0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:55.520 much power out as you're getting energy in from the 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:57.720 source of that fuel. So the same sort of thing 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:00.200 is true with electronics. And in this case, the thing 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:03.120 we talk about when we're talking about losing energy is 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:07.920 called resistance. That's the resistance of any particular material to 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:12.880 the flow of electricity through that material. So with that 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:15.880 basic information there, now we're going to really dive into 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:20.440 the very very basic building blocks of electronics. Yes, because 0:02:20.480 --> 0:02:24.280 the thing is that superconductors lose no energy to resistance, right, 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:29.280 They have no resistance exactly. However, they require extraordinarily cold temperatures, 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:31.799 like on the magnitude of thirty nine kelvin's which is 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:36.680 that's cold. Yeah, when you remember, zero kelvin is zero 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:40.079 molecular movement. That's absolute zero. That's that's like if you 0:02:40.120 --> 0:02:42.280 were to go into the deepest reaches of space and 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:46.079 there are no molecules moving around, everything is perfectly still. 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:50.960 That's zero kelvin equivalent to negative two and thirty four 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:55.600 degrees celsius or negative nine degrees fahrenheit. Right, So that's 0:02:55.639 --> 0:02:59.639 that's that's pretty cold. But to understand again about resistance, 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:02.440 let's let's take this this this tour through the building 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:07.760 blocks of electronics. So now, the early early understanding we 0:03:07.840 --> 0:03:13.079 had about electricity, uh gave us some ideas that we 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:16.880 kind of have to work around these days. Like specifically, 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:20.160 the idea of current. Current is a confusing thing for 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:24.520 someone who has doesn't understand electricity because it run the 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:27.800 direction of current runs counter to the actual flow of electrons. 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:30.240 Right when all of these terms were being created, we 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:33.200 didn't know as much about sub atomic particles a k a. 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:37.840 Much at all anything so so today, so before we 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:42.760 understood anything about electricity, we began to learn things about 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:46.400 about charge and the idea of opposite charges attracting one 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:50.880 another and like charges repelling one another. Now we could 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:54.480 have called electrons positive charge. We could have done that. 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:57.160 There's no reason why we would have said electrons are 0:03:57.200 --> 0:04:01.040 negatively charged. It's just a word, right, But that was 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:03.560 what was considered a negative charge, and then you would 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:06.680 have the opposite would obviously be a positive charge. We 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:08.880 could have called these left and right, are are up 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:12.760 and down or anything really, but banana and obo would choices. 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:16.960 Everyone knows the obo is nature's opposite to the banana. 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:20.880 So the the these opposite charges, the negative and the positive, 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:25.080 attract one another. Now, if you were to have a 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:29.839 negatively charged material and a positively charged material, uh, you know, 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:33.799 within the same general area of each other. The potential 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:38.960 that separated those opposite electric charges would be called voltage, 0:04:39.560 --> 0:04:41.840 all right. So that's when someone's talking about voltage, they're 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:45.480 talking about this potential that's separating the opposite electric charges, 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:48.000 and it's it's the capacity that they would have for 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:53.040 doing work if those opposite charges were connected together somehow. 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:55.640 So you would have to have something that would allow 0:04:56.040 --> 0:05:01.080 these charges to mix together. So back in early days 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:03.920 of electricity before we really understood the mechanics of it. 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:06.400 You would think that all right, well, all the positively 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:10.240 charged particles would leap over to the negative side and 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:12.440 the negative charge particles would lead to the positive side 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:16.000 until the charges had equalized. Right, And even if you 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:19.640 had one material that was more negatively charged than the 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:23.559 other material was positively charged, the actual negative charge would 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:26.880 also even out. Actually, like osmosis, it would kind of 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:28.680 work itself out, so you would you would end up 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:31.960 with a larger amount of material that had a negative charge. 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:34.279 It would just be a lower negative charge than the 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:39.359 original material you started with. Right. So here we were 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:42.400 still thinking about this as these little charged bodies, these 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:46.400 charged particles, both of positive and negative zipping across um. 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:50.320 And you can you can measure voltage by measuring the 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:54.480 the two different points. So for example, if you have 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:58.040 one on the positive node and one the electric node 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:01.120 are negative node rather uh, you then look at those 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:03.560 two contact points. That's where you get your voltage. If 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:06.400 you're using the same point of contact and you're checking 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:10.320 different other electrodes, uh, that same contact though contact you're 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:13.400 using for all of them. We usually call the ground, right, 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:20.000 that's the ground contact. Now, a material that does conduct 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:23.320 electricity is called a conductor for that very reason, right, 0:06:23.440 --> 0:06:25.920 so convenient and there, and there are some materials that 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:28.320 are very good conductors. A lot of the metals, for example, 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:31.560 are great conductors. How how conductive material is depends on 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:35.839 how easily it's component atoms donate electrons, right, right, You 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:39.720 need to have these free electrons. Free electrons are this 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:42.880 when you have an atom obviously have an electron shell 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:46.000 or several shells, depending on how how large the atomist. 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:50.000 Right and uh, and if you have free electrons that 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:53.640 aren't tied down to anything on the outer shells, then 0:06:53.760 --> 0:06:57.159 that allows electricity to pass more freely because what happens 0:06:57.240 --> 0:06:59.840 is a new electron comes in. This is over simple, 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.880 but a new electron comes in and essentially bonks out 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:05.799 one of the other electrons in that outer shell, which 0:07:05.839 --> 0:07:08.920 then will bonk out one further down the line. So 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:11.440 if you've got a lot of free electrons, then that 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:16.119 allows this this passage to happen fairly easily. And uh, 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:19.800 that's what allows you to connect these these differently charged 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:25.200 uh materials to equal that out. We call this current. 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:28.600 But again, the current is the idea of positively charged 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:32.440 particles passing from one material to the other. As we 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.560 learned later, it's actually electrons that are passing through, not 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:41.160 positive charges. But we we consider it stuck with the terminology, 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:44.000 which means which means that when you say current, you're 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:47.520 actually talking about the opposite direction as what the electrons 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:50.480 are really going through. So if you're talking about a 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:54.520 circuit's current, you are looking at it going positive to negative, 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:57.280 when in reality the electrons are going negative to positive, 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:00.440 basically proving that Benjamin Franklin was not a time traveler, 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:03.120 right right, Yeah, there are a lot of jokes on 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:05.800 the Internet saying that we have Benjamin Franklin to blame 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:09.640 for this misunderstanding. That again is oversimplifying it. Franklin was 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:16.080 one of but not the only, kind of kind of point. Yeah, 0:08:16.120 --> 0:08:19.000 he was like the mascot for electricity before we knew 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:21.880 what we could do with it. Now, current we measure 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:25.040 in ampiers or amps and an emperor is the rate 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:28.760 of flow of one coolmb of charge in one second 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:32.520 past some given point. And so that raises the question, 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:36.040 what is a coolmb. It's a whole bunch of charge. Yeah, 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:37.840 it's a lot of charge. It's actually quite a bit 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:41.080 of charge. But you know, we won't boil. It's not 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:45.120 technically important, no, not for not for this discussion, but 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:48.040 just know that it's a lot of charge. So if 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:50.000 you hear someone talking about a cool lomb, that's a 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:52.720 lot of charge. Now, current, of course does have the 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:55.120 direction as the flow of positive charges. You can think 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:59.320 of positive charge in a way as vacancies holes, positive 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:03.200 holes that could accept an electron. Right, because if you 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:05.760 have even if you have a build up of negative particles, 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:10.199 if there's no positively charged part if there's no if aren't, 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:14.560 if there are no vacancies at another point, then those 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:16.760 that charge is just gonna keep building up. It doesn't 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:22.080 the electronwhere, right, So that brings us to the concept 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:24.560 of an insulator. Now, an insulator is sort of the 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:27.280 opposite of a conductor. This is a material that charge 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:31.360 cannot flow through those those component atoms out there. Their 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:34.640 electrons just want to stay put. Yeah, yeah, they usually 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:39.040 the usually you don't have any free electrons on the outside. 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:43.480 They're all uh, they're all bonded together. So that means 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:46.760 that an incoming electron has nowhere to go. So with 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:49.560 nowhere to go, then this stuff just halts the flow 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:54.280 of electricity. And this includes things like air is an insulator. Now, granted, 0:09:54.800 --> 0:09:56.679 if you were to pour enough energy into air, you 0:09:56.720 --> 0:10:00.280 could ionize it and then it becomes a conductor. But 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:02.880 you have to pour energy into air for that to happen. 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:05.040 That's what happens with lightning strikes, that kind of thing. 0:10:05.760 --> 0:10:08.160 Otherwise it's more commonly it's it's it's all those things 0:10:08.160 --> 0:10:12.640 you know, like like rubber or glass. Exactly exactly. Now 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:17.720 we've covered conductors, we've covered insulators. That brings us to 0:10:18.200 --> 0:10:22.360 semi conductors. Now, this is a term that a lot 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:25.360 of people are familiar with because semiconductors we talk about 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:28.400 that all the time. We talk about electronics like microprocessors, 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:33.640 semiconductor plants, or a silicon wafer. That's what silicon chip 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:37.160 that has a microprocessor on it. So what exactly is 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:40.560 a semiconductor, Well, if you're looking at the name, it 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:43.040 kind of gives it away. It's a material that can 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:48.400 act like a conductor or connect like an insulator. Now, naturally, 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:51.800 if you were to just make a if you were 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:54.800 to make like a wafer of silicon it was pure silicon, 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:57.960 it would be an insulator. Because those those electrons are 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:01.439 all tied up, right, so you an't push more electrons 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:05.120 through it. However, if you were to start introducing impurities 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:08.120 into the silicon on purpose, this isn't right right right Yeah, 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:11.000 Like I like phosphorus or boron are two typical ones exactly, 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:14.160 Then you are doing a process that's called doping, and 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:17.760 the semiconductor business that's not a bad thing. You won't 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:20.320 get thrown out the Hall of Fame of Semiconductors for doping. 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:24.839 In fact, doping is necessary to make a semiconductor work. Now, 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:29.120 if you were to dope a semiconductor with atoms that 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:33.360 have extra electrons, extra being free electrons in that that 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:36.320 outer shell, I don't mean that they're actually carrying around 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:41.440 more electronic electrons, right yeah, like phosphorus exactly, free electrons. 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:43.800 Phosphorus has a free electrons. Then you would get what 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:48.040 it's called in type semiconductor material because it has more 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:55.600 negatively charged particles type. Now, boron has what we would 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:59.280 call vacancies or holes that what electrons could flow into. 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:02.880 So if you boron, if you introduce boron into silicon, 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:08.360 it would have availability to accept electrons. A positively charged 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:11.600 or p type exactly. And if you were to take 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:15.240 both of these types of doping and apply them to 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:18.720 one silicon wafer, so that let's just say on the 0:12:18.840 --> 0:12:22.200 left side you have N type silicon and on the 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:26.040 right sidea of P type silicon, that would allow electrons 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:30.559 to flow across in the direction from negative to positive. Correct, correct, 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:33.760 And it would prevent the flow of electrons to go 0:12:33.880 --> 0:12:36.920 from positive to negative because again those negative electrons in 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:41.520 the N type silicon will will repel any incoming electrons. 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:46.400 This is the basis of a very specific type of 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:50.520 electronic component called the diode. Diodes are important. They're kind 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:55.360 of a one way street in electronics and uh. And 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:57.560 one of the reasons this is important is when you 0:12:57.600 --> 0:13:02.200 have something like alternating current. Alternating current, it's exactly what 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:05.559 sounds like. It alternates direction. Remember I was saying before. 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:09.800 Current is the flow of positive charge in a circuit. 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:12.199 If you have alternating current running through it, then that 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:14.280 current is running one way and then the other way, 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:18.079 and it alternates at thousands of times per second. We 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:21.160 call it hurts. That those cycles per second, So it's 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:24.240 usually like twenty hurts, so twenty thousand times a second. 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:27.240 It's going pooh back and forth. Now I like that 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:32.360 sound effect. Yeah, that's the sound of electrons just zig zagging. 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:37.400 But a lot of our electronics don't run on alternating current. 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:41.079 They need to run on direct current. So diodes are 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:44.959 a good way of addressing that because they will only 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:49.120 allow charge to pass through in one direction. So even 0:13:49.120 --> 0:13:51.120 if you have an alternating current, then it's going to 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:54.440 prevent current from passing through one way and allow it 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:57.240 to pass through the other way. That's one of the 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:01.520 ways we use to to transform altering current into direct current. 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:03.959 So right, and this problem is why you get those 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:07.800 little um those little boxes on your electric plugs to 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:11.920 transform the alternating current coming in through your through your 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:17.120 system to be yea through through that the pluggy thing, outlets, outlets. 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:20.160 It's been a long day, it has, it has. I'm 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:24.280 giggling more than usual. So also, we've been in a 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:28.240 meeting for a long long time. If you need to 0:14:28.320 --> 0:14:31.880 know how long, just a quick aside, check out Josh 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:35.120 and Chuck's series Trapped in a Meeting. It's very good, 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:38.680 it's very funny, and it's very real. It's it's so real, 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:41.640 it's it's it's my video debut, So check that out. 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:45.040 That's right. You can see Lauren blocking me for almost 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:47.480 every episode. I can just see like either the front 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:49.080 on my face or the back of my head and 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:53.280 almost every shot. But uh, that's just me complaining. That's fine. 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:56.440 So let's move on to we we've we mentioned resistance. 0:14:56.480 --> 0:15:00.720 Resistance is this property that resists the flow of a charge, 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:04.240 and it depends on the material of the conductor, uh 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:08.000 and the flaws that that conductor might have that create resistance. Uh. 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:11.480 The gauge of the conductor, so example, the gauge of wire, 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:13.760 So how how much of it there is? Right, The 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:16.800 thinner the wire, the greater the resistance in general. So 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:19.840 if you're talking about copper wire and you're talking about 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:24.200 smaller gauges which are actually larger wires. I don't know 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:27.200 why that is. I'm sure someone out there understands why 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:32.680 the gauge and size are inversely related things. There's something 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:34.720 out there, I'm sure, and I bet I could have 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:36.360 found it out easily if I looked it up. I 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:38.960 didn't think too, but I'm sure some of our electron 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:43.080 attrician friends out there know exactly why. Anyway, the larger 0:15:43.560 --> 0:15:47.200 the diameter of the wire, the lower the resistance. Uh. 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:49.920 And the other thing is the temperature of the material itself. 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:52.400 In fact, if you lower the temperature of the material, 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:57.880 then you can decrease the resistance. And that's the vary 0:15:58.080 --> 0:16:02.400 basis of conductors. So and and that that that temperature 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:06.200 comes in because uh oh, you know, he heat makes 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:09.360 atoms bang around into each other more, which which is 0:16:09.640 --> 0:16:13.000 part of what causes resistance. And and on the flip side, 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:17.400 resistance causes heat, right, those atoms are starting to bang around. 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:21.000 That actually creates heat. It's essentially friction on an atomic 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:23.960 level or sub atomic level because you're talking about electrons, 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:27.040 but it still creates heat. And that's where you get 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:30.640 this loss of energy in your system or loss of output, 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:32.920 where you're not really losing energy in the sense that 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:35.680 you know it's still going somewhere, it's just no longer 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:38.200 contained within the system that you have created. Right, So, 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:40.520 what does Owns law have to do? Right? Owns law 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:44.640 is the relationship between voltage and resistance, all right, So 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:51.240 it is explained as voltage equals current times resistance, or 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:55.520 because we can switch these around, current equals voltage divided 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:59.760 by resistance. So you look at the voltage across whatever 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:03.760 the resistor itself is, whether it's a specific component in 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:07.439 electronic circuit or the overall circuit or just a wire, 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:10.440 and uh, that way, you can if you know the 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:13.440 voltage and the current, you can determine what the resistance is. Actually, 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:15.359 as long as you know any of those two, you 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:17.600 can determine the third because you know what how they 0:17:17.640 --> 0:17:22.560 relate to one another. UM. Now, on top of all 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:25.240 of this, we then have the concept of power. This 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:28.720 is that output that you're getting. And power is we 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:32.720 measure that in watt's w A T T S, and 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:37.439 power released into a resistor equals the voltage times the 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:42.680 current or voltage squared divided by resistance or current squared 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:46.199 multiplied by resistance. The point we're getting to is that 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:52.000 these basic concepts of electronics are all very very closely 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:55.160 related to one another, and the more we understand about them, 0:17:55.440 --> 0:18:00.000 the greater potential we have to uh creating new stuff 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:03.760 that really takes advantage of Right, it was our eventual 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:07.639 understanding of these basic principles that has allowed us to 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:12.200 kind of break the physics that that or or twinge 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:17.040 the physics make them go what happened was we understood things, 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:22.400 how we understood how things worked in kind of our normal, 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:27.800 under normal room temperature kind of situation. Because because you know, 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:32.640 early early people working in electronics, early people early electronics work, 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:37.520 you know, and they were trying to plug in their xbox. No. No, 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:40.320 the people who are working on electricity, very early on, 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:43.320 when we were just learning about the principles of electricity 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:47.359 and and what it is, how these different elements relate 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:51.800 to one another, they didn't necessarily have the capacity to 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:55.680 alter things enough to really see like, gosh, what would 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:58.439 happen if we super cool super cool that. Yeah, they 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:01.200 didn't have the ability to do it early early on, 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:05.520 but it wasn't too late when they started to to 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:08.719 really experiment with it. But we'll get into that, all right. 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:14.240 So that is our down and dirty basic electronics coverage there, 0:19:14.560 --> 0:19:18.240 and now we can actually look at superconductors and explain 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:20.760 exactly what they are, how they work, and why they're 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:24.040 so amazing. We're gonna take a quick break from this 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:35.080 classic episode about superconductors to thank our sponsors. All right, 0:19:35.080 --> 0:19:41.040 back to superconductors. So we've covered conductors, insulators, we've covered semiconductors, 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:45.359 we've heard about resistance. What exactly is a superconductor? All right? 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:49.679 Technically this is some sort of material that will conduct 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:55.200 electricity without resistance below a certain temperature. And you don't 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:57.600 want that resistance obviously, because again you have that loss 0:19:57.600 --> 0:19:59.720 of energy. You wanted to be as efficient as possible. 0:19:59.760 --> 0:20:02.000 So if you could find a material that does not 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:07.280 convert any of that energy into heat and it's all output, 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:11.440 then you've just dramatically increased the efficiency of your system. 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:14.360 It's about as close to perpetual motion as we can 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:17.399 ever expect to get, which is really exciting, you know, 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:19.720 for cost purposes and all kinds of all kinds of 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:22.080 fun research bits which will get into in a minute sure. 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:25.680 And uh. In fact, the according to superconductors dot org, 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:28.480 which has a lot of really fun information about superconductors 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:33.000 by the way, Uh, scientists call it a quote macroscopic 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:38.160 quantum phenomenon in the quote, which is huge literally because 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:41.080 you're talking about macroscopic But but that's the things that 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:44.920 quantum phenomena. We normally think of quantum mechanics quantum phenomena 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:48.719 as happening on a subatomic scale, right, so small that 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:51.840 even our most powerful light microscope couldn't see it. You'd 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:55.160 have to use something like an electron telling microscope. It's 0:20:55.200 --> 0:20:58.560 highly theoretical and and all very tricky. It's really interesting 0:20:58.640 --> 0:21:01.080 because our laws of physics we know it starts breaking 0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:04.040 down at that point. But right, but it's really hard 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:06.080 to figure out what's going on there because it's so 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:08.960 dark and tiny. Right, Yeah, it's it's a totally different 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:10.960 set of rules than what we're used to on the 0:21:10.960 --> 0:21:14.640 classic level. And to have something on the macroscopic level 0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:18.840 that seems to behave under these quantum phenomena is pretty amazing. 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:21.320 So exactly what's going on, Well, let's go back a 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:25.399 little bit and look at the history of learning about this. Right, so, 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:29.600 way back in nineteen eleven, a Dutch physicist whose name 0:21:29.680 --> 0:21:32.000 I am now going to butcher, and I apologize to 0:21:32.080 --> 0:21:35.120 anyone out there who is from the Netherlands who's going 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:41.320 to WinCE at everything. I say, um, hi k Kummerling 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:44.480 on this of Leighton University, and I bet it's Leyden 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:46.600 University too as soon as I say it's Laden because 0:21:46.720 --> 0:21:53.199 Leyden jars. But anyway, uh, this physicist discovered super conductivity, 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:55.119 or at least observed it for the first time as 0:21:55.160 --> 0:21:59.160 far as we know, looking at solid mercury. They had 0:21:59.280 --> 0:22:02.600 made a solid artery wire and cooled it to the 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:07.239 temperature of about four kelvin using liquid helium, and that 0:22:07.440 --> 0:22:10.240 is about negative four hundred fifty two degrees fahrenheit or 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:12.960 negative two d sixty nine degrees celsius. And he noticed 0:22:12.960 --> 0:22:16.280 that when he did this, its resistance suddenly disappeared. Right, 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:19.480 So this was interesting. This is the sort of thing 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:24.320 that I thought I always imagined scientists doing, sitting around 0:22:24.320 --> 0:22:26.680 the lab and just saying, huh, I got this stuff. 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:29.120 I wonder what happens if I do X to it. 0:22:29.600 --> 0:22:33.440 You know, let's drop the temperature down to almost absolute 0:22:33.520 --> 0:22:36.359 zero and see if that does anything interesting. Uh. I 0:22:36.400 --> 0:22:38.320 know it's way more complicated than that, but I like 0:22:38.400 --> 0:22:41.000 to think that that's what scientists are doing. Yeah, And 0:22:41.440 --> 0:22:44.959 what's what was really going on there was that the 0:22:45.000 --> 0:22:49.320 mercury at that temperature underwent a phase transition. But we'll 0:22:49.359 --> 0:22:51.480 get more into that in a second. Right, So then 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:54.080 we skip ahead a little bit. That was nineteen eleven 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:59.199 and nineteen thirty three some German researchers Walter Meisner, not 0:22:59.400 --> 0:23:03.399 the aimed theater mentor because I have a lot of 0:23:03.440 --> 0:23:09.679 Meisner technique different sharing. Guyisner and Robert Oceanfeld discovered that 0:23:09.800 --> 0:23:14.000 a super conducting material will repel a magnetic field. Now, 0:23:14.040 --> 0:23:17.919 this is super cool as well. I keep using that. 0:23:17.960 --> 0:23:20.280 I didn't mean to, and I should have caught myself. 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:23.680 It's it's really interesting. It's really interesting. If you've ever 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:26.520 seen there's lots of videos on YouTube, right of people 0:23:26.720 --> 0:23:31.720 using magnets and super cooled super conductor material and they 0:23:31.720 --> 0:23:37.280 can lock the material in a levitating state above the magnet, right. 0:23:38.080 --> 0:23:42.720 Or sometimes they have a super conducting base that is 0:23:42.720 --> 0:23:44.880 super cooled and then they put a magnet on top 0:23:44.920 --> 0:23:48.320 of it and it seems to just hang in the air. Now, technically, 0:23:48.400 --> 0:23:50.680 if you if you actually listen to the physicists who 0:23:50.680 --> 0:23:52.600 talked about this, there's a great Ted talk where a 0:23:52.600 --> 0:23:56.760 guy demonstrates this. Town it's will link it on social 0:23:56.920 --> 0:23:59.240 I mean everyone's seen it, but we'll we'll link it 0:23:59.280 --> 0:24:02.880 anyway because it's still fun to watch. Uh. He explains 0:24:02.920 --> 0:24:08.400 that technically it's not levitation, it's what they call quantum lock. Uh, 0:24:08.440 --> 0:24:10.760 And so it's a little different from that that we'll 0:24:10.800 --> 0:24:13.200