Re: Room temperature superconduction in carbon fiber? Or the
Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Fri, 10 Jul 1998 09:53:05 -0700
mark@unicorn.com writes:
>Here's a weird one:
>
> http://www.buffalo.edu/news/Latest/ChungResistance.html
>
>Some researchers claiming to have negative-resistance carbon fibers which
>when combined with normal fibers give zero resistance. What they're saying
>baffles me (and I only took my Physics degree a few years ago), but it may
>be of interest if it's real.
If it's real and can taken literally, it should be of great interest.
Most likely they've goofed, or the effect is much less general than they've
described. If you put a negative R into the solutions of a standard RLC
curcuit equation (which I'm staring at at the moment), you get exponential
growth in current. So at the very least this effect must be valid only
within a limited current range. And by P = I^2 R, this would seem to be
an energy source, which could only work for a limited time.
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-2627