Sellotape, HB pencils and materials science

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 was awarded jointly to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene”. The most pop sci thing about the work was that they used sticky tape and an HB pencil to “draw” graphene monolayers on to a glass slide. Graphene is essentially a single layer of graphite, the stuff found in the lead of a pencil.

I am currently researching and writing an editorial for a major materials science journal on the subject of graphene safety and thought I’d juxtapose a few mundane elements to create an illustration. Watch out for the upcoming link and blog write-up on Sciencebase.com when my editorial is published in the journal in June.