4.7 KiB
What could you do with a perfect (room-temperature) conductor?
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Author: u/MugaSofer *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3a5omm/what_could_you_do_with_a_perfect_roomtemperature/
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Score: 4
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Created: 2015-06-17T12:49:18
Post:
Comments:
u/lsparrish [+4] *
You can build arbitrarily large coils with one of these. For example, wrap a coil around the earth. This could e.g. tap into the earth's magnetic field as produced by its spinning core.
u/Bowbreaker [+4] Solitary Locust*
Did you perchance come here from With This Ring?
u/MugaSofer [+2] *
Heh. Yep, figured I should recruit /r/rational to come up with ideas.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+6] Emergency Mustelid Hologram*
Prevent the fall of the City Builder civilization on the Ringworld.
u/Sagebrysh [+3] Rank 7 Pragmatist*
Build a spaceship. Always the solution.
u/Sceptically [+4] *
Recruit an orchestra.
u/ulyssessword [+2] *
Is it a perfect conductor of heat too, or just electricity?
u/Empiricist_or_not [+1] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm*
I've seen this concept in fiction but don't keep up with material science to know if the idea of something with a k^th of 1 is a physically possible thing. (Or is it 0? Anywho a perfect thermal conductor.) Is there any science behind this idea? I'd say it seems to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, but I don't get much past the Bohr model in most of my assumptions without using pen and paper.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption*
Aren't superfluids supposed to be perfect thermal conductors?
u/Empiricist_or_not [+2] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm*
Oooh. .. thank you. I'm reading "amazingly high thermal conduction" postulated based on a percentage of the fluid being in one quantum state and reacting as a unit.
Wow! Something that might be a real macroscale quantum effect. . . (this second sound thermal waves thingy). I've got a a lawn to mow and one or two dozen OCR papers to real today, but if anybody knows a good survey level physics paper on the quantum state characteristic, effects , and validating experimentation, then I'd much appreciate it.
u/ulyssessword [+1] *
I've never heard any science about it and wouldn't be surprised if it didn't exist, even as a theoretical substance. I don't see why it would violate any thermodynamic laws though. I imagine it as having 0 specific heat capacity too, so it doesn't have a temperature for most purposes, it only acts to equalize the temperatures of everything touching it.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+2] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm*
Temperature is an measurement of average molecular energy passed on by Brownian motion and changes come from energetic regions of lower entropy transferring (i want to say thats high enthalpy but i think that might be another characteristic and not the same thing) to areas of lower energy causing increases in entropy. Thermal conductivity of a substance comes from a combination of a molecules mass and its freedom to move (cause collisions) and I can't see how something would "freely" accept and transmit heat without some artificial negentropy pump.
Edit: unless temperature were being transmitted by some other means: See AUgSphere's post below and then if you think physics is fun take a wiki walk starting with "Superfluids"
u/Farmerbob1 [+2] Level 1 author*
Any limit on mass? If not, build quench guns for launching raw materials into space.
u/ajuc [+2] *
Hoverboard.
u/Transfuturist [+1] Carthago delenda est.*
Superconductor, you mean? Well, ever since that youtube video, I've always wanted to make a model maglev train set... :P
u/MugaSofer [+1] *
A better-than-super-conductor; one with no loss, no resistance at all. Link.
u/Solonarv [+3] Chaos Legion*
Superconductors share the property of having no resistance. The property held by perfect conductors and not by superconductors is constant magnetic flux. The difference between the two is that superconductors will expel all magnetic flux when they become superconductive, and then permanently have zero magnetic flux inside the material. The field inside perfect conductors never changes. This is quoted from the article you linked.
u/None [+1] *
Yeah, room-temp superconductors would be way cooler than room-temp perfect conductors (because quantum, woo!), and the existence of the former is a far more examined idea in modern physics. bangs gavel