Posted on 08/08/2009 10:39:58 PM PDT by Swordmaker
WASHINGTON -- Imagine a carbon sheet that's only one atom thick but is stronger than diamond and conducts electricity 100 times faster than the silicon in computer chips.
That's graphene, the latest wonder material coming out of science laboratories around the world. It is creating tremendous buzz among physicists, chemists and electronic engineers.
"It is the thinnest known material in the universe and the strongest ever measured," Andre Geim, a physicist at the University of Manchester, England, wrote in the June 19 issue of the journal Science.
"A few grams could cover a football field," Rod Ruoff, a graphene researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, said by e-mail. A gram is about one-thirtieth of an ounce.
Like diamond, graphene is pure carbon. It forms a six-sided mesh of atoms that, through an electron microscope, looks like a honeycomb or piece of chicken wire. Despite its strength, it's as flexible as plastic wrap and can be bent, folded or rolled up like a scroll.
(Excerpt) Read more at 2.timesdispatch.com ...
It sounds like Mithril in The Lord of the Rings. Mithril is the metal that the dwarves mined from the Mines of Moria. It was lightweight and extremely strong. They made armor out of it. It saved Frodo's life.
What if they made cars out of it? You get into a wreck. Since it is so flexible, it absorbs the shock of the collision. And if it can be given a memory, it will spring back into shade.
Some people are afraid of heights...I’m afraid of widths.
LOL - that's the first thing I thought of, too.
bump for science!
???? I think the laws of physics might disagree with that statement
Really? You can make material one atom thick with sticky tape?
Not really...The drift velocity of electrons is very slow about a millimeter per 5 seconds in copper wire if its 10 amps.
The movie shows a high-resolution transmission electron microscopy study of the structure and dynamics of graphene at the edge of a hole in a suspended, single atomic layer of graphene. The injection of electrons causes ejection of carbon atoms, leading to rearrangement of the bonds at the edges into a zigzag configuration, which represents the most stable form.
True, but drift velocity is not conduction speed.
These are pure carbon compounds, like diamonds and graphite, discovered by Richard Smalley in the 80s. Nano Technology.
Sounds like the stuff they found at Roswell.
They might have claimed it to be 100% more efficient but 100% faster is wrong, like you pointed out earlier. Still fascinating.
I wonder if thats the same type of material that was allegedly found in Roswell after the alleged alien aircraft crashed...........makes one go Hmmmmmmmmmm
It would be the type of material that conceivably could be strong enough to make an elevator to space, having an immense bedrock anchor on Earth and the opposite end connected to a geostationary station in space it would eliminate almost any need for Earth to orbit aircraft.
many sci-fi authors have written about this material, most recently the Blue Mars series.
lmao
elevator idea was Arthur C Clarkes. Kim Stanley Robinson,while technically a fun read,solving problems of terra forming,still is,in all 3 books,writing about enviromentalism.
The first graphene was made by applying tape to a graphite block and peeling it off. I think a lot of it is still made that way.
Silicon is one of the least conductive of all elements. I suspect the writer is not much on physics.
I believe he got the idea from a Russian scientist for his novel The Fountains of Paradise, though Clarke gets credit for the geostationary orbit for communications satellites.
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