Graphene: The Next Big (But Thin) Thing
If you haven't heard of it before, you have now. And it may prove to be the next big thing in materials science. SciShow explains what it is, why it's so awesome, and what challenges we face...
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Graphene: everybody's talking about it. When hearing some of its basic properties, youmight have wondered if people were confusing it with some kind of substance only foundin comic books. It's one atom thick, conducts electricity better than silver, conducts heatbetter than diamond, and it's stronger than steel. It would take the focused force ofan elephant balancing on a pencil point to pierce through a piece of graphene as thickas plastic wrap.And yet, graphITE is made of the same stuff. And yeah, that crumbly stuff used to makeyour pencil is a lot less impressive. So what's up? Graphene is made of carbon, and carbonhas only two naturally occurring crystalline structures; graphite, which is just stacksand stacks of graphene piled on to...
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Graphene: everybody's talking about it. When hearing some of its basic properties, youmight have wondered if people were confusing it with some kind of substance only foundin comic books. It's one atom thick, conducts electricity better than silver, conducts heatbetter than diamond, and it's stronger than steel. It would take the focused force ofan elephant balancing on a pencil point to pierce through a piece of graphene as thickas plastic wrap.And yet, graphITE is made of the same stuff. And yeah, that crumbly stuff used to makeyour pencil is a lot less impressive. So what's up? Graphene is made of carbon, and carbonhas only two naturally occurring crystalline structures; graphite, which is just stacksand stacks of graphene piled on to...
