The Green Optimistic

Imagine your television set working for 0.0001Watt, or your electric car charged by the Sun as you go. Imagine almost never ending batteries powering cool engines, no power lost through heat.

A team of researchers from the University of British Columbia, coordinated by Physics Assoc. Prof. Andrea Damascelli, has managed to develop a technique that controls the number of electrons from the surface of a high temperature superconductor. This procedure has been considered impossible for the last 20 years.

Sumitomo has shown a prototype of a car (a Toyota - shown in picture) that uses special type of engine, a liquid-nitrogen cooled one. The use of liquid nitrogen makes usual copper conductors have superconducting properties.

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has discovered a new type of iron-based superconductor that shares the same magnetic properties with the older copper-oxide superconductors. The amazing fact is that the new superconductors have all those magnetic properties at higher temperatures.

Equipment
To make an yttrium-barium-copper-oxide superconductor, you will need:
* Yttrium Oxide
* Barium Carbonate (TOXIC)
* Cupric Oxide
* A Laboratory Furnace or a converted pottery kiln.
* Labware made of alumina.
* An Oxygen Source
* Liquid Nitrogen and a rare-earth magnet for testing and demonstrating the superconductors

Superconductors are the next viable step in energy savings worldwide. They are being used to carry energy in Sweden, USA, Japan, and the list extends pretty fast to other countries.
What is a superconductor?
Ok, this following paragraph is for the absolute-beginner.
As you know starting with 6th grade physics, a wire made of copper or aluminum or [...]