Recently, some Franklin STEAM Academy students walked into their library and discovered that a section had been turned into a physics lab.

On one side of a table were two glass beakers, a tall silver cylinder, and some safety equipment. And on the other side was a magnet, about the size of a hockey puck, floating and spinning above another magnet. “What the …,” a seventh-grade student said, incredulously, upon spying what he later learned was a superconductor.

Before the student could finish, guest speaker Nadya Mason introduced herself and the day’s lesson. “Today, we’re going to look at what happens when materials get cold. What happens is extraordinary,” she said, piquing their interest. Mason is a Rosalyn Sussman Yalow Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois and director of the Illinois Materials Research Science and Illinois Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (I-MRSEC) on the Urbana-Champaign campus.