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Building a demo for electrical supercoductivity (srsly)
Skoal Cat
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Full disclosure: This is work related, but its for educational purposes!
I need (want) to build a demo that shows what superconductivity does in an electrical system. It needs to be very visual and show the improvement as obviously as possible (ie, showing the increase in current with a multimeter is too abstract). The upside to all of this is that I have access to what may be the most difficult parts, liquid nitrogen and YBCO (superconductive material). My ideas so far:
Power source hooked up to a light bulb using a wire. When you cool the wire down, the light bulb gets brighter since the resistance drops. In theory this is true, but in brief tests the light bulb didn't get noticeably brighter.
Power source hooked up to a motor with a fan on it. As the wire and motor are cooled down, the fan spins faster. Haven't tried this one yet.
Power source hooked up to a series of LEDs. The more current that passes through the circuit, the most LEDs light up. This is my ideal build but I have no idea what the process would be for connecting this. We've got a decent budget to pull from so I don't have to scavenge anything, we can order materials.
Its also been suggested to me to do something not showing the lowering of electrical resistance, but to show the absence of heat. I'm stuck on electrical resistance and can't think of other great visual ideas (aside from floating magnets, we're actually all over that in a separate program).
I need (want) to build a demo that shows what superconductivity does in an electrical system. It needs to be very visual and show the improvement as obviously as possible (ie, showing the increase in current with a multimeter is too abstract). The upside to all of this is that I have access to what may be the most difficult parts, liquid nitrogen and YBCO (superconductive material). My ideas so far:
Power source hooked up to a light bulb using a wire. When you cool the wire down, the light bulb gets brighter since the resistance drops. In theory this is true, but in brief tests the light bulb didn't get noticeably brighter.
Power source hooked up to a motor with a fan on it. As the wire and motor are cooled down, the fan spins faster. Haven't tried this one yet.
Power source hooked up to a series of LEDs. The more current that passes through the circuit, the most LEDs light up. This is my ideal build but I have no idea what the process would be for connecting this. We've got a decent budget to pull from so I don't have to scavenge anything, we can order materials.
Its also been suggested to me to do something not showing the lowering of electrical resistance, but to show the absence of heat. I'm stuck on electrical resistance and can't think of other great visual ideas (aside from floating magnets, we're actually all over that in a separate program).
Skoal Cat on
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For an example of what I mean, check out this video. The effects they demonstrate don't happen at all above a certain temperature, but instantly appear when the material is cooled to the correct temperature.
If you're trying to convince someone to spend money on this a better route may be to show them the financial benefits. Calculate how much money is actually lost to resistance and then multiply that by how many units they're running or miles of wire they deal with or whatever and convince them that this is a huge money sink that can be eliminated. Perhaps for your demo you can actually use a multimeter but have it set up to read in units of dollars rather than ohms so they can see how much money is being lost.
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I have a display at work that shows how added resistance affects an EM Field (that is used for vehicle detection). EM Fields are invisible though...so it isn't very visual.
The problem is that wire losses are really, really small for low-current applications like these - you may have to use a spool with several hundred (or thousand) feet of wire in it (http://www.cirris.com/testing/resistance/wire.html) to get a noticeable loss in resistance.