SUPERCONDUCTIVITY

A project report submitted to Council for Indian School Certificate examination

IN

PHYSICS
By

ARNAV SAMPIGETHAYA

Register Number: 1021770

UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF

DR. AJAYA KUMAR

GREEN WOOD HIGH

Bengaluru-560087
AUGUST 2019

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CERTIFICATE

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ABSTRACT

Superconductivity can be defined as “a complete disappearance of electrical

resistance in a substance especially at very low temperatures.” This has
been a topic of great interest to scientists since it was theoretically proven.
However, this topic has gained more significance now that a group of
students from IISC Bangalore have claimed to have found a superconductor
at room temperature.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the Principal of our school, Mr. Aloysius D’Mello for
giving us the opportunity to do this project. Secondly, I would like to thank
my Physics teacher, Dr. Ajaya Kumar for his help and guidance in the
execution of the project. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents for giving
me the tools and resources to ensure this project is delivered on time.

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CONTENTS

Heading Page No.

Certificate 2

Abstract 3

Acknowledgements 4

List of Tables

List of Figures

THEORETICAL PROJECT

1. Introduction
2. Background
3. Objective
4. Analysis of the Data
5. Summary
6. Conclusions
7. Bibliography

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LIST OF TABLES

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LIST OF FIGURES

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INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Superconductivity is a phenomenon in which the electrical resistance of

certain materials completely vanishes at low temperatures. It is one of the
most interesting and sophisticated topics in condensed matter physics. It was
first discovered by the renowned Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes,
who was the first to liquefy Helium (which boils at 4.2K at standard
pressure). In 1911, Onnes discovered the phenomenon of superconductivity
while studying the resistance of metals at low temperatures. They studied
mercury because it was easy to prepare pure samples by using distillation.
This measurement gave results as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. - The resistance of mercury measured by Onnes

As in other metals, the electric resistance of mercury decreased steadily

upon cooling, but dropped drastically at 4.2 K and became almost
undetectably small. Following this discovery, many other elemental metals
were found to possess zero resistance when their temperatures were lowered

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below a certain specific temperature of the material, called the critical
temperature, denoted as ‘Tc ‘

Some of these temperatures are given below in Table 1.

Table 1 : The critical temperatures of some superconductors .

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