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Re:What Happens When You Drop A Magnet Inside A Copper Tube ... by rbanffy on Monday February 03, 2014 @06:22PM (#7174294)
Lucky kids. When I was in school, the only commercial superconductors were liquid Helium cooled Niobium-Titanium alloys, something not many classrooms could handle. ;-)

Luckily, when I got to programming, we already had zeroes and ones. Imagine our predecessors who had to do it with uppercase o's and lowercase l's...

Re:What Happens When You Drop A Magnet Inside A Copper Tube ... by mjcohen on Monday February 03, 2014 @06:55PM (#7174474)
Ha! When I was in school, we had to push the electrons around by hand! You kids had it easy!
Re:What Happens When You Drop A Magnet Inside A Copper Tube ... by JakeStone on Monday February 03, 2014 @07:16PM (#7174575)
You guys had electrons? We had to use scotch tape on a bunch of quarks and give them a half spin and then push them.

Uphill. Both ways.

Re:What Happens When You Drop A Magnet Inside A Copper Tube ... by smoyer on Monday February 03, 2014 @08:28PM (#7174889)
I'm declaring a winner here ... the only possible thing that could top that is "through three-foot deep snow".
Re:What Happens When You Drop A Magnet Inside A Copper Tube ... by IgorPartola on Monday February 03, 2014 @08:05PM (#7174787)
I forget what type we used but it was cooled by liquid nitrogen. That prof. used lots of magnets and superconductors in his research, some cooled by Helium-3. Now that stuff is expensive.
Re:What Happens When You Drop A Magnet Inside A Copper Tube ... by fnordfnordfnord on Monday February 03, 2014 @11:13PM (#7175451)
The high-temperature ones were probably Yttrium-Barium-Copper-Oxides (YBCO) I've seen this demo done with them. The magnet's motion is almost undetectable, they appear suspended in the copper pipe until they start to warm up.
Re:What Happens When You Drop A Magnet Inside A Copper Tube ... by lotharbot on Tuesday February 04, 2014 @12:03AM (#7175618)
Re:What Happens When You Drop A Magnet Inside A Copper Tube ... by Intermernet on Monday February 03, 2014 @06:46PM (#7174419)
Zeroes and Ones? Luxury! In my day we couldn't afford the Ones, we had to make do with just Zeros...
Re:What Happens When You Drop A Magnet Inside A Copper Tube ... by dllthomas on Monday February 03, 2014 @06:37PM (#7174379)
lOl