[natejenkins]

It might not sound like a lot but you need to put it in the scale of the atoms. That is about a 1% change in atomic spacing, which means a 1% strain applied to the sample, which is pretty big (think about how much weight you'd need to hang off of a steel bar to get it to stretch by 1%).

Pressure and strain are known to have large effects on superconductivity. In fact the highest known Tc of any material is HgBCuO under externally applied pressure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconductiv...).