Konstantin Novoselov (left) and Andre Geim of Manchester University have won the 2010 Nobel prize for physics, for creating graphene.
Posted on 10/05/2010 6:31:35 AM PDT by WebFocus
wo scientists at Manchester University have won the 2010 Nobel prize for physics for creating the thinnest possible flakes of carbon.
The news that Andre Geim, 51, and Konstantin Novoselov, 36, had received the 10m Swedish-kronor (£1m) prize was announced today by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Novoselov is the youngest Nobel laureate since 1973.
Geim and Novoselov were both born in Russia and collaborated as PhD supervisor and student in the Netherlands before moving to Manchester University, one of Britain's top physics institutes.
The scientists' breakthrough came from a deceptively simple experiment in 2004 that involved a block of carbon and some Scotch tape. The two used the tape to strip off layers of carbon that were only one atom thick. These thin wafers of carbon, known as graphene, were found to have extraordinary properties.
Tests showed the graphene layers were stretchy, as strong as steel and almost completely transparent. Graphene is an exceptionally good conductor of heat and electricity, properties that have made it one of the most exciting new materials for producing electronic components, from touchscreens to pollution sensors. The thin wafers can also be used to study some of the more peculiar effects of quantum mechanics.
Graphene consists of carbon atoms held together in a flat lattice like chicken wire. Drawing a pencil across a sheet of paper produces thin sheets of graphite, but Geim and Novoselov managed to find a way to reliably separate these sheets into wafers only a single atom thick. There are around three million sheets of graphene in a millimetre-thick layer of graphite.
Novoselov was chatting online to a friend in Holland at 10am this morning when he heard of his award in a phone call from the Nobel committee.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
What is Graphene?
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6941ZP20101005
* Graphene is one atom thick, which makes it the thinnest material ever discovered. It is a sheet of bonded carbon atoms densely packed in a honeycomb crystal lattice.
* At an atomic scale, it looks a bit like chicken wire made of carbon atoms and their bonds. It is almost completely transparent and yet also extremely dense.
* Graphene is highly conductive, conducting both heat and electricity better than any other material, including copper, and it is also stronger than diamond.
* In 2004, Geim and Novoselov found a way to isolate individual graphene planes from graphite — a material used in many things including ordinary pencils — by using adhesive tape.
* The discovery of graphene completely changed materials science and condensed-matter physics and offered physicists a way to study two-dimensional materials with unique properties.
* Possible applications include the creation of graphene transistors that could become much faster than today’s silicon ones and give rise to more efficient computers.
“What is Graphene?”
I thought it was one of Obama’s kids.
HA!
So they ran a pencil across some scotch tape and got the Nobel Prize?
They earned it far more than Obama did.
Cool! Congratulations to the two winners.
Apparently the powers at the university were taken aback by its briefness, but impressed by the science. The story goes that they sent it to Einstein to review asking him if it was worthy of awarding a doctorate in physics at the Sorbonne. Einstein purportedly replied that he did not know if it satisfied the requirements of a doctorate in physics, but it was certainly worthy of a Nobel Prize in Physics.
The story may be apocryphal, but it is fun.
Not really. Its what they did after they did that that warrants the Nobel.
But yea, dragging a pencil across a piece of scotch tape is more than what Obama did...by far.
America looks like a total has-been.
Graphene is really neat. It has no practical purposes but it has lots of ‘potential’. So millions have been dumped into reseaching it.
Redneck version:
Ma, I need graphene paper for my math class!!!!
Badda boom!!!!
Yabut...what's the carbon footprint?
Ban it!
Sounds like they’re dumbing down the nobel prize for physics. In 1965 they awarded it for developing a whole new branch of phyics (QED -Tomonaga, Schwinger, Feynman). Now its for discoving an allotrope of carbon which really should be for chemistry not physics.
It is chemistry. It is called Fullerene Chemistry named after Buckminister Fuller and the basic Fullerene compound is a C60 sphere aka a Bucky Ball which has the same physical structure as two of Fuller's Geodesic domes put back to back.
A prerequisite for a chemistry degree is a course in physical chemistry. So chemists can work in physical chemistry and physicists can work in physical chemistry.
Are you sure 'practical' is the correct word to use?
Seems I read, in the article, of at least three practical applications.
Graphene is cool stuff, though. Lots of unique and interesting properties.
No. Not for putting pencil marks on Scotch Tape.
They got the prize for getting the pencil marks back OFF the Scotch Tape.
The article talks about ‘extraordinary properties’. Someone from Machester U. says “This is a wonderful example of a fundamental discovery based on scientific curiosity with major practical, social and economic benefits for society.” I’m not belittling the posibilities of the material, I have no idea what it may become. It may be the substance of the future in many areas.
But as of today, six years after its discovery, it is not being used in any application, anywhere as far as I’ve been able to find. And all this research is not being done by private companies. It’s public money.
Not only do I know who Bucky Fuller was, my nextdoor neigbor was an engineer for Kaiser who helped design the Dymaxion automobile, which of course was a commercial flop, saw him speak at UCSB back in the eighties, and took p-chem as an undergraduate.
RE: It may be the substance of the future in many areas.
If this is the case, isn’t it too premature to award this prize? Or is the mere discovery of this substance regardless of actual practical application, sufficient to receive the prize?
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