Trains, superconducting materials

The Japanese alternative is the maglev system, and several prototype trains have been tested successfully by the country s engineers. What is maglev, however, and how does it work And how will the new superconducting materials contribute to giving us a transportation system that would be a realistic version of the fabled flying carpet ... 

High-Tc superconducting material is not an enabling technology, but it is an enhancing one. For maglev trains, this could prove to be extremely... 

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. 

An experimental levitation train that operates on superconducting material at the temperature of liquid helium. 

The levitation effect can be used to construct fast, quiet and smooth trains riding above the tracks. These operate on superconducting materials. 

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. 

Such high-tech methods have not yet brought the new superconductors into the marketplace, but they most certainly give manufacturers what they need most from the warmer bulk ceramic materials—the forms that will carry frictionless electrical current and channel its perpetual, enormous power into everything from that wristwatch to flying trains. If the necessary properties can be built into the new superconductors, if the problems that still bedevil them are ironed out—and few, if any, believe that they will not be resolved—then superconductivity, once an exotic plaything, will, like the transistor and the laser, change the very way we live and work. 

In the 1980s, a ceramic form of copper(I) oxide was found to have superconducting properties at temperatures higher than previously known superconductors. Superconductors have the ability to carry an electric current virtually without resistance. Once a current is initiated in a superconductor, it continues to travel through the material essentially forever. Superconductor research may lead to new technologies, from cheaper electrical power to magnetically levitated high-speed trains. 

Driven by the ever-increasing demand for limited resources, this process of refinement for physical efficiency progresses in every aspect of transportation on land, sea, and air. Paradoxically, it is in the area of railway transport that applied physics offers the greatest possibility of advancement with the development of nearly frictionless, magnetic levitation systems upon which modem high-speed bullet trains travel. Physicists continue to work toward the development of materials and systems that will be superconducting at ambient temperatures. It is believed that such materials will completely revolutionize not only the transportation sector but also the entire field of applied physics. 

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