All the electronic devices around you – your phone, your computer, even your bedside lamp – are based on moving electrons through materials. In most materials, there is an opposition to this movement (kind of like friction, but for electrons) called electrical resistance, which wastes some of the energy as heat.
This is why your laptop heats up during use, and the same effect is used to boil water in a kettle.
Superconductors are materials that carry electrical current with exactly zero electrical resistance. This means you can move electrons through it without losing any energy to heat.
The snag is you have to cool a superconductor below a critical temperature for it to work. That critical temperature depends on the material, but it’s usually below -100 °C.
A room temperature superconductor, if one could be found, could revolutionise modern technology, letting us transmit power across continents without any loss.
To read more, click here.