Fun Science

You’ve probably heard of Graphene. If not, it’s basically a sheet of Carbon one atom thick which, well, does everything you can think of  and more. Here’s just a few of the things it does:

• It allows incredibly fast data transfer speeds, almost 1 terabit/second
• It may be able to be used in phone batteries which charge in 5 seconds.
• It can clump together radioactive waste, facilitating its disposal much more efficiently.
• It can be used to make filters so that sea water from literally anywhere is drinkable.
• It can be used to create touchscreens which are incredibly thin and never break
• A single sheet of graphene can produce headphones that are as high quality as a pair of sennheisers
• It could be used to create bionic conductors which can reconnect neurons and so people with spinal injuries will be able to use their limbs again
• It can repair itself itself when broken.
• It can form a gel, aerographene, which is less dense than air

And that’s just a small taster of its many uses.

What fascinates me, however, isn’t just the fact that one material can do so many things. What fascinates me is the way that it was discovered. What basically happened was that two physicists used  a piece of tape to peel away individual layers of graphene from a piece of graphite. They were, essentially, just messing around and this resulted in the discovery of a revolutionary material. And it’s not even the first time this happened. A few years ago, they also managed to successfully levitate a frog. It actually looks really funny:

When I was a kid, I had this image of being a scientist that was, well, less than exciting. I thought it was all about carefully planned experiments based on long, well-defined processes and studies. But things like this show that there is room to just mess around and have a bit of fun. I actually really enjoy that sort of thing, just coming up with a crazy idea and going with it.

There’s just something very satisfying in knowing that even if you just do something that’s completely out of the blue, there’s a chance in succeeding and making something that’s really wonderful.