What's superconductivity? How could it be beneficial to the scientific world or society in general today?

Answer 1

Superconductivity is when you have a material which has no electrical resistance. This is beneficial, because it means that no energy is lost due to resistance (turned into heat), like with normal metals, say copper.
Also, they are actually able to levitate a frog above a superconductor - weird.

Answer 2

Superconductors have a number of interesting properties. Perhaps the most well know is superconductors have zero electrical resistance. That means when current passes through a superconductor, there is no joule heating and no voltage drop. This can be used to make zero loss conductors, and hence, are more energy efficient than conductors like copper and silver. Superconductors are also perfect diamagnets -- they will completely expel an applied magnetic field. Hence, they can shield out magnetic fields or can be used for high-speed levitating trains (they exist in Japan). You can also form a device somewhat like a transistor called a Josephson junction from two superconductors separated by a thin insulator. These devices have use very low power per switching event and switch very fast. JJs can be used for high-speed low-power electronics. Unfortunately, superconductors only exists at temperatures way below room temperature.

Answer 3

superconductivity occurs when you cool down certain metals to around -271*C or 0*K. these metals enter a new state of matter, and loose all resistance when conduction electricity.

as of yet, there is no practical use to superconductivity, except from levitating magnets above superconductive rings (which isnt very enegy efficient since cooling the ring would take more energy than actually producting a magnetic field to levitate the magnet.