More on Cooper Pairs

• The electrons in the superconducting state are like an array of rapidly moving vehicles. Vacuum regions between cars locks them all into an ordered array as does the condensation of electrons into a macroscopic, quantum ground state. • Random gusts of wind across the road can be envisioned to induce collisions, as thermally excited phonons break pairs. With each collision one or two lanes are closed to traffic flow, as a number of single-particle quantum states are eliminated from the macroscopic, many-particle ground state.