How Superconductors Work

In September 2026 chemists at the University of Warwick reported that a copper-based superconductor studied for about forty years hides a patchwork of slightly different atomic arrangements. This film explains what superconductors are: how resistance wastes energy, how Heike Kamerlingh Onnes saw mercury's resistance vanish in 1911, how superconductors push out magnetic fields and make magnets float, how electrons team up in Cooper pairs, how the cuprates of 1986 and 1987 broke the liquid-nitrogen barrier, why their mechanism is still not fully understood, how superconducting magnets run MRI scanners, the Large Hadron Collider and the fastest train on Earth, and why the 2023 claim of a room-temperature superconductor did not hold up.

How superconductors work

Electricity with no resistance at all.

Resistance

Every wire turns some electricity into heat.

Floating magnets

A superconductor pushes magnetic fields out.

Pairs

Why electrons stop bumping.

Warmer

Ceramics that beat liquid nitrogen.

Uses and hype

Magnets you have probably been inside.

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