Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Have your say! - The human mind open to unknown things

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carmen Toledo
Date: Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 5:28 PM


I would like to show you a phenomenon and a scientific machine.

On the one hand, I ´m a teacher, and I had the opportunity with my physics students to visit in the Science´s week in Madrid an activity called “Superconductivity”. What does this term mean?
Superconductivy is the property of zero electrical resistance in some substances at very low absolute temperatures. This capacity produces interesting and potentially useful effects.  Let´s go to watch a video to check the behaviour of superconductor materials that experience superconductivity.



I found this phenomenon quite surprising to my students and myself. But what´s the reason why the materials have resistance zero at low temperature?

Let´s to analyze it with an example, Suppose you have a piece of gold wire in an electrical circuit. Gold is one of the best conductors there is: it shows very little resistance to electricity. But it increases its temperature and offers much more resistance. In general terms, the higher the temperature, the more thermal vibrations there are within the crystalline structure and the harder electrons will find it flow. On the contrary, if you lower the gold, you reduce the vibrations and make the electrons flow more easily.

On the other hand, I want to show you the largest and most powerful particle Accelerator. It surprise me because it enormous dimensions . The LHC (the large hadron collider) consists of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way.





The mechanism is complex but basically is used to generate electromagnetic fields to accelerate charged particles at high speeds, and thus, collide with other particles in order to desintegrate the particles, then Scientifics can study that the starting particles were based on the generated particles.

Fortunatelly, today  the  European  Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) is available to be  visited by students and teachers, to help both groups learn more about CERN, particle physics and our place in the universe.



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