How does a maglev train work?
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Answer:
Maglev -- short for magnetic levitation -- trains can trace their roots to technology pioneered at Brookhaven National Laboratory. James Powell and Gordon Danby of Brookhaven received the first patent for a magnetically levitated train design in the late 1960s. The idea came to Powell as he sat in a traffic jam, thinking that there must be a better way to travel on land than cars or traditional trains. He dreamed up the idea of using superconducting magnets to levitate a train car. Superconducting magnets are electromagnets that are cooled to extreme temperatures during use, which dramatically increases the power of the magnetic field.
The first commercially operated high-speed superconducting Maglev train opened in Shanghai in 2004, while others are in operation in Japan and South Korea. In the United States, a number of routes are being explored to connect cities such as Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
In Maglev, superconducting magnets suspend a train car above a U-shaped concrete guideway. Like ordinary magnets, these magnets repel one another when matching poles face each other.
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