Posted on 10/05/2010 6:56:31 AM PDT by Pan_Yan
A pair of Russian-born physicists working at the University of Manchester in England have won the Nobel prize in physics for investigating the remarkable properties of ultra-thin carbon flakes known as graphene, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Tuesday.
They are Andre Geim, 51, and Konstantin Novoselov, 36. They will split the prize of about $1.4 million.
Graphene is a form of carbon in which the atoms are arranged in a flat hexagon lattice like microscopic chicken wire, a single atom thick. It is not only the thinnest material in the world, but also the strongest: a sheet of it stretched over a coffee cup could support the weight of a truck bearing down on a pencil point.
Among its other properties, graphene is able to conduct electricity and heat better than any other known material, and it is completely transparent. Physicists say that eventually it could rival silicon as a basis for computer chips, serve as a sensitive pollution-monitoring material, improve flat screen televisions, and enable the creation of new materials and novel tests of quantum weirdness, among other things.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Thank you for your intelligent discourse.
Yea, I know. Sometimes proofreading is not my strong point.
What if the material could be made stiffer? I wasn’t thinking of a material that was as flimsy and flexible as plastic wrap. I was thinking “steel-hard” and inflexible, but much, much lighter than steel.
And it’s transparent, put a little glue on it and voila, illegal immigrant flypaper. ICE’s job just got easier.
As a dedicated charcoal griller (vs. gas), I look forward to some new high-tech "graphene" charcoal. Yeah!!
My money says they were trying to develop a newer, thinner, stronger condom.
Years ago as a WWII vet getting into chemistry, My professor arranged for me to give demonstrations about liquid LO2. My most memorable one was at Scottsdale Ariz. high school. There were a number of show acts including taking a sip and blowing out like a volcano. Another was setting iron filings in a pan on a block of ice. The LO2 ignited the filings and melted a hole in the ice block into which LO2 flowed. Then the ice froze back until ihe block was shattered by the expanding O2. But the most memorable act was freezing a tennis ball solid by dipping it in the LO2. stepping off the stage and to show the students the ball was actually frozen I threw it against the facia above the stage. My biggest applause came when about 10-15 square feet of plaster came crashing down. As I recall the whole show was considered a roaring success.
I’d love to have seen a demo like that....
If it’s loosely draped it could be sucked in, but if it’s stuck to the entire body, or as several hundred sheets sandiwched within the armor, it could convert the penetrating force on a small point to a pulling force across the whole piece of armor.
This stuff is pretty crazy. You’d look like a mime playing with it, since it’s basically invisible, allowing 97% of light through. It also doesn’t have any noticeable weight. If somebody put a 500 square meter roll of this stuff in your hands you wouldn’t even be able to feel the weight.
Aside from the obvious strength benefits, it also conducts heat and electricity extremely well, so look for applications along those lines too.
Southern Ingenuity: applying the world’s strongest, thinnest material to BBQ :)
IIRC, this is quite consistent with some materials discovered in the UFO realm.
Do the posters to this thread so far realize that it might be “strong” in its own micro-scale, but that is has no strength at all in the real-world macro-scale? It’s a freakin’ atomic mono layer folks! Won’t support a gnat’s spit, much less a truck on a pencil tip (which was a truly bizarre example. My guess is that the NYT author never set foot in a science class.) Sure, take its tensile strength, multiple by 10 orders of magnitude and Whammo! - magic! Except it doesn’t scale that way in the real world. “Thinking” seems to have become a lost art...
“Germans?”
“Don’t interrupt them, they’re on a roll.”
Hey, it IS carbon, after all! ;)
(BTW, my dad and I cooked an 80 lb. pig last Saturday. It was a belated b-day party for me. Good times!)
I wonder how well it would stop a bullet?
Might make for some excellent body armor.
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