ted about the future potential of superconductors.
The first superconductors date back to the early twentieth century and the research of the Dutch scientist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes. In 1911, Onnes took a piece of mercury wire and chilled it to an extremely low temperature with the use of liquid helium. Onnes received an unexpected surprise when he found that there was absolutely no resistance when he ran an electrical current through the wire (2:10). Onnes named his discovery "superconductivity," and he received a Nobel Prize for his work in 1913. The temperature at which Onnes obtained his result was incredibly low. In order to describe that temperature, Onnes used the Kelvin scale. According to the Kelvin scale, 0 degrees K is equivalent to "absolute zero" (no heat at all). This is approximately the same as -460 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale (2:7). According to the Kelvin scale, the freezing point of water is about 273 K. The temperature at which Onnes found no resistance in his mercury wire was a mere 4 K. From this, the extreme coldness required for superconductivity is apparent.
Soon after Onnes made his discovery, a number of theories arose trying to explain how and why superconductors work. At first, scientists had a difficult time coming up with a theory to explain the strange new phenomenon. Then, in 1935, the brothers Fritz and Heinz London arrived at the first plausible theory for superconductivity. The Londons determined "that electrons joined up in some way and moved as a team, like horses harnessed to a wagon, instead of singly, as a racehorse might travel down a track" (2:22). Although many scientists accepted the idea that electrons worked in teams in a superconductor, the Londons' theory was still inadequate because it failed to explain how the electrons overc
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