Trains, levitating

Figure 5.2 Scientists have created a means of revolutionary train travel. The "levitation" train travels over superconducting metal. This metal concentrates electricity so that it becomes an intense magnetic field. Magnetic parts in the train make the train levitate and travel at speeds close to 350 miles per hour.

Superconductors have the ability to levitate vehicles with embedded magnets. This picture shows an experimental zero-friction train in Japan, built to use helium-cooled metal superconductors. 

FIGURE 3.43 High-temperature superconductors may make magnetically levitated vehicles a reality. This picture shows an experimental train in Japan. 

An interesting property of superconductors is their ability to create a mirror image of a magnetic field within themselves. As a result, they are repelled by magnetic fields and can even be levitated above them (see Fig. 1.53). This property has led to research on the possibility of levitating railroad trains and other vehicles fitted with superconductors over magnetic tracks (see Fig. 3.43). 

The discovery of high-temperature superconductors is surely one of the most exciting scientific developments in the last 20 years. It has stimulated an enormous amount of research in chemistry, physics, and materials science that could some day lead to a world of superfast computers, magnetically levitated trains, and power lines that carry electric current without loss of energy. 

FIGURE 21.15 An experimental magnetically levitated train (Maglev) in Japan is suspended above superconducting magnets that are cooled with liquid helium. This five-car train has attained a speed of 552 km/h in a manned vehicle run. 

Twenty-five years ago, Stanford s William Little startled the general public with his predictions of plastic materials that had no electrical resistance at high temperatures, room-temperature superconductors, flying carpets, superconducting skis, trains that levitated over tracks and glided smoothly along at 300 miles per hour, and frictionless electrical transmission lines. 

Yet, recently there has been a renewed interest in rail alternatives—high-speed ones, of course, in keeping with the national preference. More specifically, the focus has centered on fast trains that would take advantage of developments in superconductivity and give us one of the most spectacular of all of its potential applications magnetically levitated trains, maglevs, that would literally fly between... 

Page 133. Both the air and highway modes..Presentation to the Department of Energy on the application of high-temperature superconductivity to magnetically levitated trains by Larry Johnson, July 13, 1987. 

Niobium alloys are used in superconducting materials. They are used in applications ranging from ma etic resonance imaging (MRI) to levitation trains, like the prototype pictured here. Such trains use ma etic levitation and are capable of reaching high speeds. IMAGE COPYRIGHT 2009, MARTIN TRAJKOVSKI. USED UNDER LICENSE FROM SHUTTERSTOCK.COM. 

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