What We Saw at the World Science Festival: Quantum Levitation
An unearthly demonstration of the eternal feud between superconductivity and magnetism Enthusiastic crowds jostled to get a better view of the quantum levitation display at Innovation Square on Saturday, a day-long celebration of science held at MetroTech Plaza in Brooklyn as part of the World Science Festival. Run by Boaz Almog, an inventor and physicist at Tel Aviv University, it was the first public demonstration of its kind in the U.S. and by far one of the most popular events at the Square. Almog carefully dunked puck-sized discs into jars of liquid nitrogen and allowed onlookers to nudge them into hovering orbits. To the touch, the disc felt like a rough piece of ice. brightcove.createExperiences(); The principle behind quantum levitation is called the Meissner effect: a material will expel magnetic fields...