Is Bismuth The Future Of Tech?
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Bismuth crystals aren't just pretty to look at. If you can get pieces thin enough, they display something called the Anomalous Hall Effect. Physicists aren't entirely sure how they manage to do that, but that doesn't stop them from thinking up applications.
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Sources:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTQBB4bLYJmu987fjQAzOEyxzC6YTDwGsbEAdxm_5f0do1CV1dA5XAS72WzqfEIiO6wU-01l94xWtwT/pub
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Video Transcript
I'm about to show you the most beautiful element on the periodic table.
Behold, bismuth, atomic number 83.
Technically radioactive, but it breaks down so slowly that our universe would have to be a billion times older for you to really notice.
It's so safe, you can eat it.
I mean, not like this chunk of crystal, but bismuth is a critical ingredient in medications you take to ease symptoms like nausea, heartburn, indigestion.
in, it puts the biz in pepto-bismol.
And recently, one team of scientists identified another application for bismuth.
It could bring about a mini-revolution in electronics.
You just gotta take a microscope.
microscopic cheese grater to it first.
Some elements start displaying some funky properties when you get small enough pieces
of them.
One of the most famous examples is carbon, which you can turn into a one-atom-thick layer
of graphene that's 200 times stronger than steel.
A team of researchers in Canada was interested in exploring what unusual properties they
might uncover by getting bismuth as thin as possible.
To do that, they'd take a small crystal, stick it on the end of a metal rod,
and rub it against a plane of microscopic ridges to shave the flakes they needed.
This was kind of a revelation, because previous research required
super fancy tech to get pieces of bismuth this small.
Now, labs all over the world, without access to that equipment,
can join in on the research with what's basically a cheese grater.
To understand what the team found when they studied these super thin flakes, we first have to understand an electromagnetic phenomenon called the Hall effect.
Way back in 1879, a man named Edwin Hall was playing with wires, magnets, and thin sheets of gold leaf.
He found that when he had a current flowing through the length of a conductor, and he moved that conductor inside a magnetic field the right way,
a voltage would appear across its width, which is perpendicular to the voltage you learn
about in high school physics.
Here's what's happening.
A flowing current means that electrons are moving down the length of the conductor, generally
straight down it.
But the external magnetic field created by the magnet exerts a force on those electrons
and causes the path they take to bend.
They wind up shifting toward one of the conductor's sides.
Electrons are negatively charged, so that side of the conductor builds up a negative charge.
But that movement also means a positive charge builds up on the opposite side.
So across the width of the conductor, you get what's called a potential difference,
aka a voltage.
The more powerful the external magnetic field, the larger that voltage.
This is the part of the Hall effect you wind up measuring.
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