Topics that will be covered each week, roughly

• Week 0 (Sep 26)
  Introduction to the course
• Week 1 (Sep 30)
  What is a superconductor and why it's interesting
  Superconducting materials overview: conventional, unconventional, hydrides
  Basic properties of superconductors, especially the Meissner effect. Difference with perfect conductors.
• Week 2 (Oct 7)
  History: how the Meissner effect was missed in 1924, then discovered in 1933, and why it took so long
  Lippmann's theorem
  Different routes for the normal-superconductor transition in a magnetic field
  London's two theories of electrodynamics of superconductors
• Week 3 (Oct 14)
  Energetics of the Meissner effect
  Four questions about the Meissner effect that need to be answered
  Simply connected and multiply connected geometries
  What Keesom's experiments tell us about the Meissner effect
• Week 4 (Oct 21)
  Outline of the conventional (BCS) theory of superconductivity
  What the conventional theory of superconductivity says and doesn't say about the Meissner effect
  Type I and type II superconductors
  Why it is generally believed that the Meissner effect is understood
• Week 5 (Oct 28)
  What Alfven's theorem tells us about the Meissner effect that BCS doesn't know.
  What batteries tell us about the Meissner effect that BCS doesn't know.
  What liquid ⁴He tells us about the Meissner effect that BCS doesn't know.
  Pippard's calculation
• Week 6 (Nov 4)
  What's wrong with London electrodynamics, and how to do it right
  How superconductors know that electrons have negative charge
  Rotating superconductors: the smoking gun
• Week 7 (Nov 11)
  What Heisenberg, Peierls and Bloch knew in 1928 and BCS didn't in 1957
  How supercurrents start flowing defying Newton's and Faraday's laws
  How supercurrents stop flowing without generating Joule heat
  How the Hall effect explains the Meissner effect
• Week 8 (Nov 18)
  How equilibrium between normal and superconducting phases in a magnetic field works
  Alfven waves in superconductors
  Superconducting wire: what it tells us about the Meissner effect
  Electrostatic fields in and around superconductors
• Week 9 (Nov 25)
  Mean inner potential of superconductors
  Spin currents in superconductors; electrodynamics of charge and spin
  Superconductors as macroscopic hydrogen atoms
  Experiments that can and should be done
  
• Week 10 (Dec 2)
  Quantum pressure
  Early theories that got many things right yet were ignored
  How the Meissner effect tells us where to look to find room temperature superconductors
  How room temperature superconductors will change the world