Quantum locking how does it work

Fortunately for all of us, Joe Hanson—who runs the awesome blog It's Okay to be Smart went out of his way to explain this phenomenon in more accessible terms:. What you start with is an inert [i. That wafer is then coated with a superconductor called yttrium barium copper oxide.

When superconductors get very cold like liquid nitrogen cold they conduct electricity with no loss of energy, which normal conducting materials like copper can't do. Superconductors hate magnetic fields when cold enough , and normally would just repel the magnetic force and float in a wobbly fashion. But because the superconductor is so thin in this case, tiny imperfections allow some magnetic forces through. These little magnetic channels are called flux tubes [pictured here].

The flux tubes cause the magnetic field to be "locked" in all three dimensions, which is why the disk remains in whatever position it starts in, levitating around the magnets. Those of you with backgrounds in materials science, ceramics engineering or graduate-level physics may recognize this phenomenon as something similar to the Meissner-Ochsenfeld effect , though strictly speaking what you're witnessing is not a result of the Meissner effect.

How does it work? What are the possibilities? The effects of quantum locking can only be experienced when using type II superconductors since type II superconductors can allow for small amounts of magnetic field penetration. These electrons still bump into the atoms that make up the conductor and lose a bit of energy with each collision.

But, when cooled to a sufficiently chilly temperature, the electrons can flow freely through the conductor without any collisions. Metallic superconductors such as pure aluminum or niobium, for example, have extremely low critical temperatures, typically only a few degrees above absolute zero. Liquid helium boils at 4. For most high-temperature ceramic superconductors, such as those made of yttrium barium copper oxide YBCO or bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide BSCCO , liquid nitrogen can be used to cool them below their critical temperatures.

But how can we float a magnet above the cooled superconductor? Or vice versa: in our video with Richard Garriott , he floated a cooled superconductor above a bed of rare earth magnets. Quantum magnetic levitation boils down to something called the Meissner effect, which only occurs when a material is cold enough to behave like a superconductor.

At normal temperatures, magnetic fields can pass through the material normally. Once it is cold enough to exhibit superconductivity, however, those magnetic fields get expelled.

Any magnetic fields that were passing through must instead move around it.