Superconductivity is a property that a metal can acquire where it loses all of its electric resistance and becomes nearly 100-percent efficient. It’s useful is making awesome magnets, in MRI machines and microscopes, and, in the future, it’ll maybe be used in everything from mag-lev trains to electrical transmission. It’s one of the most immediate and practical aspects of quantum mechanics.Superconductivity is hard though. Generally you have to make metal really, really cold for it to happen. Impractically cold. That is, until 2008 when it was discovered that some iron-based compounds can achieve superconductivity at room temperature. But, for this to happen it takes months of exposing the iron-based compound—iron-based not iron, importantly—to air. Months.So that won’t do. Well, Japanese scientists have discovered a way to make it happen within 24 hours: soak it in booze, preferably warm booze like red wine or sake. The best part is that the researchers, who are publishing a paper on this tomorrow in IOP Science, really have no idea why. It might not even be the booze, but something else that all the beverages share.A little explanation of superconductivity: electrons move pretty easily through a metal because metals don’t hang on to their electrons very tightly, OK? But as they’re cruising through what is a comparatively tight atomic order. electrons still hit atoms and lose energy as heat. In superconductivity, electrons pair up. The first electron traveling through the metal exhibits a force on the atoms around it, creating a sort of tunnel or trough, and also lessening resistance for other electrons. So, like a drafting cyclist, a second electron is attracted to the first because it’s showing a easier way through the atomic fray. Thank you, HowStuffWorks.Related:
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