Lexus automaker unveiled its “Slide” hoverboard at a custom-crafted skate park in Spain. It is a skateboard-like device that floats a few inches above the ground, promising the ultimate in futuristic, personal travel.
The hoverboard is constructed from an insulated core, containing HTSLs (high temperature superconducting blocks). These are housed in cryostats – reservoirs of liquid nitrogen that cool the superconductors to -197°C. The board is then placed above a track containing permanent magnets. When the board is cooled to its operating temperature the track’s magnetic flux lines are ‘pinned’ into place, maintaining the hover height of the board.
With a superconductor you don’t need to have an oscillating magnetic field [like Hendo’s],” explains Eric Palm, Deputy Laboratory Director at FSU’s National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. “Instead you have something called the Meissner effect, which essentially says that when you take a magnetic field near the superconductor, it induces current in that superconductor, and creates essentially an image magnetic field on the other side of the superconductor.
You create current, but since it’s a superconductor, the currents don’t die away. So you don’t need oscillating magnetic fields. You can have a magnet that levitates above a superconductor or vice versa, a superconductor that levitates above a magnet.
When the liquid nitrogen runs out, the superconductors warm up and the hoverboard stops, well, hovering, until you top it off again.
Riding the Lexus hoverboard is basically like straddling a maglev train. As
For more details visit: http://www.lexus-int.com/amazinginmotion/slide/