Uses of Superconductivity in Medical Science: Difference between revisions
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Jump forward to the year 1933, and into the research of Walther Meissner and Robert Ochsenfeld. The two were conducting research in the newly maturing area of metallic properties at low temperatures when they discovered an important characteristic for superconductors (Type I only), the Meissner Effect. The researchers noticed that once their metallic sample had been cooled to a temperature in which it could make its transition into a superconducting state, it would repel any applied magnetic fields that were placed in the sample’s presence. Building upon the work of Meissner and Ochsenfeld, researchers Fritz and Heinz London produced some theoretical groundwork that was useful for explaining the experimental results that had been observed thus far, but little else. Another attempt to explain superconductivity was made in 1950, by scientists L. D. Landau and Vitaly Ginzburg. Although this theory too did little to fully explain the nature of superconductivity, it did predict the splitting of superconducting materials into two categories, Type I and Type II superconductors. | Jump forward to the year 1933, and into the research of Walther Meissner and Robert Ochsenfeld. The two were conducting research in the newly maturing area of metallic properties at low temperatures when they discovered an important characteristic for superconductors (Type I only), the Meissner Effect. The researchers noticed that once their metallic sample had been cooled to a temperature in which it could make its transition into a superconducting state, it would repel any applied magnetic fields that were placed in the sample’s presence. Building upon the work of Meissner and Ochsenfeld, researchers Fritz and Heinz London produced some theoretical groundwork that was useful for explaining the experimental results that had been observed thus far, but little else. Another attempt to explain superconductivity was made in 1950, by scientists L. D. Landau and Vitaly Ginzburg. Although this theory too did little to fully explain the nature of superconductivity, it did predict the splitting of superconducting materials into two categories, Type I and Type II superconductors. | ||
Revision as of 10:58, 21 April 2011
Brief History of Superconductivity
The beginnings of superconductivity can be traced back to the research done by scientist Kammerling Onnes in the year 1911. Onnes, while serving a professorship of physics at the University of Leiden (in the Netherlands), was studying the electrical properties of pure metals at low temperatures (near zero degrees Kelvin) using another recently discovered phenomenon, liquefied helieum. He found that when he immersed the metals (mercury, for historical purposes) the electrical resistivity for the metal suddenly dropped to zero. This was not what was expected, neither by Onnes nor his peers at the time, and was thus the discovery of the phenomenon known as superconductivity.
Jump forward to the year 1933, and into the research of Walther Meissner and Robert Ochsenfeld. The two were conducting research in the newly maturing area of metallic properties at low temperatures when they discovered an important characteristic for superconductors (Type I only), the Meissner Effect. The researchers noticed that once their metallic sample had been cooled to a temperature in which it could make its transition into a superconducting state, it would repel any applied magnetic fields that were placed in the sample’s presence. Building upon the work of Meissner and Ochsenfeld, researchers Fritz and Heinz London produced some theoretical groundwork that was useful for explaining the experimental results that had been observed thus far, but little else. Another attempt to explain superconductivity was made in 1950, by scientists L. D. Landau and Vitaly Ginzburg. Although this theory too did little to fully explain the nature of superconductivity, it did predict the splitting of superconducting materials into two categories, Type I and Type II superconductors.