Daniel P. McGahn named AMSC President and Chief Operating Officer
American Superconductor Corporation has named Daniel P. McGahn President and Chief Operating Officer.
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Oxford Instruments wins Corporate Excellence Award
From the Oxford Instruments website: The British Chamber of Commerce in Japan (BCCJ) has announced that Oxford Instruments KK has won the prestigious Corporate Excellence category at the 2009 British Business Awards.
NHMFL breaks previous record with new magnet
The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory has broken the record for the highest-field "resistive" magnet with their recently upgraded 36-tesla magnet, which uses electricity to generate high magnetic fields.
World’s thinnest high temperature superconductor shows potential
Physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have created layered films of cuprate (copper-oxide) materials that allow them to localize the superconducting behavior to a single atomic plane.
Which states in the US have established RQs for liquefied nitrogen?
I’m curious to know which states in the United States have established a reportable quantity (RQ) for liquefied nitrogen, should it be unintentionally released into the atmosphere. What are the RQs for these states? Here in Massachusetts, the RQ for LN2 is 10 pounds. Mark Bennett Office of Environmental Health...
Popular culture interest in STEM growing
CERN on the The Daily Show, NASA on The Colbert Report, outreach raps for the LHC, the Tevatron and FRIB, Japanese Manga art “edutainment” for KEK, standup comedy on the helium shortage, the Australian Science Agency teaming up on a science takeoff of a Backstreet Boys’ song, hundreds of songs...
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Cold Compressors
A common way to provide cooling below the normal boiling point of helium (4.2K) is to reduce the pressure above the bath of liquid helium, thus also reducing the bath’s equilibrium saturation temperature. For example, to produce a 1.8K bath of liquid helium, the saturation pressure has to be reduced...
Kapitza Conductance
Kapitza conductance refers to the heat transfer between a solid surface and a fluid that covers that surface. Fundamentally, it describes the inherent difficulty in transferring energy from a solid to the fluid covering the solid surface. This phenomenon was first observed by P. L. Kapitza in 1941 while studying...
Thermosyphons
A thermosyphon (or thermosiphon) is a device that transfers heat via natural convection in a fluid. The natural convection is driven by gravity with the colder, denser fluid flowing downhill and the warmer, less dense fluid flowing back up. Thus, thermosyphons connect an object to be cooled with a reservoir...
Cryogenic Electronics
Randall Kirschman, consulting physicist, Mountain View, California ExtElect@gmail.com Cryogenic electronics—the operation of electronic devices, circuits, and systems at cryogenic temperatures—has been a valuable technology for decades. Cryogenic electronics (also referred to as low-temperature electronics, or cold electronics) can be based on semiconductive devices, on superconductive devices, or on a combination...
Particle Physics: High Energy Physics
Cryogenics and High-Energy Physics 1. From symmetry magazine: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000627: Cryogenics is the study of how materials behave at temperatures near absolute zero. In high-energy particle accelerators, such frigid temperatures reduce the electrical resistance of wires in superconducting magnets, increasing the magnet strength and allowing faster particle acceleration. The same holds...
HTS Degaussing Systems
From the Spring 2009 issue of Cold Facts (Volume 25, Number 2): Thanks to a joint project by the US Navy and a number of industry partners, high temperature superconducting (HTS) technology is now at the heart of an advanced degaussing system aboard the USS Higgins at the naval station...
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
From http://www.superconductors.org: An area where superconductors can perform a life-saving function is in the field of biomagnetism. Doctors need a non-invasive means of determining what’s going on inside the human body. By impinging a strong superconductor-derived magnetic field into the body, hydrogen atoms that exist in the body’s water and...
An Issue of Pressure and Flow Rate in a Supply Tank
Please help solve this problem: A supply tank requires a vaporizer to generate sufficient pressure to pump stored fluid up into a vehicle or tank. The available head is limited as the tank level falls and it is important to minimize the system pressure drop to maintain the desired flow...
Using MLI on VJ Line Joints or Cryo Storage Tanks
When installing Multi Layer Insulation (MLI) blankets on VJ line joints or cryo storage tanks should they be wrapped and tied down tight or loose? These are usually pre-cut to size. Also should they have an access hole at the point of where the molecular sieve is installed to help...
Separated layers of ice over a pipe
I want to know that why there are different layers of ice over a pipe carrying a cryogenic fluid, each layer separated with clear marks / lines? What do these layers signify?