Superconductors

One of the “Holy Grails” of the electronics industry is to have access to conductors with zero resistance to the flow of electrons, and for such conductors, known as Superconductors, to operate at room temperatures. As a concept, superconductivity is relatively easy to understand: consider two sloping ramps into which a number of pegs are driven. In the case of the first ramp, the pegs are arranged randomly across the surface, while in the second the pegs are arranged in orderly lines. Now consider what happens when the balls are leased at the top of each surface (Figure 21-25).

In the case of the randomly arranged pegs, the balls progress is repeatedly interrupted, while in the case of the pegs arranged in orderly lines, the ball slips through “like water off a duck’s back”. Although analogies are always suspect (and this one doubly so), the ramps may be considered to representing conducting materials, the gravity accelerating the balls takes on the role of voltage differentials applied across the ends of the conductors, the balls play the part of the electrons, and the pegs portray atoms

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