Lexus' New Hoverboard Is Cool, But Will It Fly?

A month ago, Japanese automobile maker Lexus revealed its freshest item, and it's not another extravagance SUV. It's a hoverboard.

Nicknamed the "Slide," this flying skateboard will be tried in broad daylight surprisingly on Wednesday (Aug. 5), the organization reported for the current week in a brief feature posted on YouTube. The feature demonstrates the smooth load up drifting over what gives off an impression of being normal bond in a skateboard park, driving some hoverboard fans to theorize that, finally, somebody has delivered a flying skateboard that you can really ride in a halfpipe or down a walkway.

Be that as it may, in the event that you believed Lexus' new toy would transform you into Marty McFly from "Back to the Future Part II" (the one with the epic hoverboard pursue scene), reconsider. Lexus' Slide can't really drift over consistent concrete. [Hyperloop, Jetpacks & More: 9 Futuristic Transit Ideas]

Inside the Slide

The Slide utilizes attractive levitation, or maglev, to keep itself (and its rider) floating over the ground, as per the organization's site, which expresses that the board depends on "fluid nitrogen cooled superconductors and changeless magnets" to work.

Since it utilizes superconductors, which are materials that can lead power with zero resistance beneath a certain temperature, Lexus' hoverboard is marginally not quite the same as other maglev innovations, for example, the super-fast maglev prepares in Japan, China and different nations. Maglev trains are lifted off their tracks and impelled forward by traditional electromagnets (a kind of magnet with an attractive field made by an electrical current). The electromagnets are situated under the train's carriage and are repulsed by different magnets installed in the train track. The cooperation between the two arrangements of magnets is the thing that permits the train to oppose the power of gravity and stay "above water" noticeable all around.

Be that as it may, the superconductors in Lexus' hoverboard work a bit in an unexpected way. They deliver a capable electrical current when cooled to a certain temperature, and the solid electrical current that the magnet delivers thus makes an in number attractive field that repulses the attractive field made by different magnets that may be found adjacent. This repulsing power is the thing that keeps the hoverboard noticeable all around.

To keep the superconductors inside their hoverboard working, the people at Lexus cool them to freezing temperatures utilizing fluid nitrogen. In the YouTube feature, you can see a white, smokelike substance pouring out of the hoverboard. This is water buildup, or mist, created when fluid nitrogen hits the air around the superconductor.

What you don't find in the feature Lexus posted a month ago are the magnets underneath the hoverboard that repulse the superconductors. All you see underneath the board is the thing that looks like normal cement. Yet, there may be more to that cement than meets the eye, as per the skateboard specialists at El Patín, a Spanish skateboarding site.

One of the site's supporters headed toward the skate stop that Lexus fabricated in Cubelles, a region in Barcelona, which is the place the organization is supposedly going to make a big appearance the hoverboard one week from now. The El Patín author said in a blog entry that the recreation center is "not precisely what it appears."

Concealed magnets

The Cubelles skate park is produced using sheets of plywood and a slender layer of solid, as per El Patín. At the end of the day, it's not a genuine skate park, but rather it's made to resemble one.

As Lexus said on its site, the hoverboard works utilizing both superconductors and "changeless magnets." In the exceptionally assembled skate stop, these lasting magnets are laid out like a track and are covered up under the wood and solid surface of the recreation center's inclines and different surfaces, as per El Patín. This concealed track makes the figment that the hoverboard is moving openly around the skate park, much the same as a normal skateboard. All things considered, the board can just move over the attractive track. [9 Cool Facts About Magnets]

Its failure to drift over any surface makes Lexus' most recent tech toy a touch pointless to any individual who doesn't have entry to an exceptionally charged skate park. Notwithstanding, this isn't the first run through an organization has assembled a hoverboard that must be utilized as a part of particular areas.

In December 2014, the pioneers behind the Hendo hoverboard came to their Kickstarter subsidizing objective. Yet, their cutting edge skateboard just works when set over a copper surface. The Hendo hoverboard contains four electromagnets that substitute their attractive fields and instigate a repulsing attractive field in the copper surface underneath the hoverboard, Eric Palm, agent chief of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University, told Live Science in December.

Hendo's hoverboard will be making its open presentation at a uniquely made, copper-covered "drift park" in October, as indicated by the organization that made the board. Along these lines, you won't be cruising down the walkway on the Hendo load up at any point in the near future, either.

On the off chance that you need a hoverboard that can be utilized as a part of a more normal setting (i.e., anyplace other than an irregular skate park strewn with magnets or copper), then you may need to converse with Catalin Alexandru Duru, who fabricated a model hoverboard that lifts off the ground utilizing two propellers. This courageous innovator as of late made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for longest hoverboard flight when he flew his model load up 905 feet (276 meters) over a Canadian