Nuffield Students demonstrate the phenomenon of Superconductivity

Two AS level summer students,  Adam McAteer (Carmel College, St. Helens) and Keir Pearson (King’s College Macclesfield), spent 4 weeks in August at the Daresbury Laboratory to get an insight into conducting real life physics experiments. Their visit was supported through STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering or Maths) bursaries from Nuffield foundation.   They students were assigned a project to install and commission a pulse tube cryocooler for developing an experimental facility for the laboratory to conduct small experiments at low temperatures down to 4K.  The enthusiastic students not only completed the project successfully in time but also made it exciting by demonstrating the phenomenon of superconductivity by measuring the resistance of a NbTi filament through the superconducting transition. The resistance dropped to zero below the transition temperature, which was found to be close to 9 K. (See figure below)

Many thanks to Adam and Keir, their efforts have now provided a new experimental tool to the laboratory where small components can be characterised at cryogenic temperatures in a very short period of time.