The MagSurf is a levitating skateboard based on the principles of superconductors. It was built by scientists and students in the Laboratoire Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques at Paris Diderot University.
The video is older, but it turned up recently in a really interesting blog post by Kyle Hill that does a fantastic job of explaining how superconductors work — and why you can create a floating skateboard, but you're stuck using it in conjunction with a track.
Instead of putting a magnet above a superconductor, you can put a special kind of superconductor above a magnet and “pin” it in space. Type type-II superconductors, like the one featured in this now viral “quantum locking” video, are superconductors that also expel magnetic fields from their innards, but not perfectly. These superconductors are thin enough for flaws in the material to allow small “flux tubes” or “quantum vortexes” to leak through. When that happens, it’s like suspending a pincushion on a bed of nails—the superconductor is locked in space.
