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Pencil 'Lead' Mightier than Diamonds?
GuardianBob420 writes "Space Daily is reporting that a team of researchers has used a combination of extreme pressure and irradiation to alter the molecular structure of graphite -- resulting in a previously unobserved super-hard form of the stuff.
From the article: 'The graphite that resulted from our experiment was so hard that when we released the pressure we saw that it had actually cracked the diamond anvil.'"
blah blah blah pen is mighter than the sword blah blah blah
We wish you would
-everybody else reading slashdot
Does this mean deBeers will offer graphite engagement rings?
Ducks...
Now instead of a diamond ring, I just have to get her a number -9e-62 pencil! Now if I can only figure out where to get one....
This sig no verb.
I want that diamond anvil!
Does this really prove anything? I broke lots of glass windows with rubber balls as a kid.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
...that if they could mass-produce it could completely change our lives.
I tell ya, there's a revolution in materials engineering happening. There are so many substances being discovered or created that have radical properties these days. Sooner or later one of them will be mass-produced cheaply and efficiently and we will have space elevators and super-powerful batteries and all kinds of other cool stuff.
You know, it's a good thing Wile E. Coyote never got a hold of a diamond anvil.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Or very lightweight airplanes.
Imagine computer cases that dont bend and break. Ever.
Imagine taller skyscrapers.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
If you're rich enough to have a record collection,
:)
I'll bring my bazooka round for inspection.
C30 C60 C90 go
see-three-oh see-six-oh
C30 C60 C90 go
see-ninety-go
three-oh six-oh nine-oh
GO!
- Bow Wow Wow
-1, Offtopic, I know, I know. C'mon, moderators, give it your best shot, I can take it!
I now have a response to all those people who called me a pencil-dick!
I heard that in certain Eastern European countries, diamonds were mightier than pencil lead.
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
Pencil lead isn't lead or graphite. It's (usually) a mixture of graphite and clay. So pencil lead wouldn't work in this process.
Now I can get some mechanical pencil lead that won't break all the time. Or even smudge!
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
The article tells very little about the strength of the compressed graphite crystals.
Are they just "hard", and able to pass any scratch test thrown at them, or are they "strong", and able to support heavy loads(such as a space elevator!?).
Either way, the manufacturing process being used is only able to produce small samples, and is very similar to the process used to create artificial diamonds (from the text of the article, it appears that the process is the same, but with a few steps added in)
Diamonds may be hard, but have very little 'real' use, and aren't exactly strong. We have already proven our ability to (at great expense) manufacture synthetic diamonds, but have yet to find many useful applications for them (other than sawblades, etc...). In addition, it is very difficult (physically impossible) to make them into useful shapes without cutting them into very small pieces and using a bonding agent due to their crystaline structure.
Either way, this should prove to be interesting. I could definitely see this replacing diamonds in industrial applications. In addition, the graphite which forms these new crystals is much harder AND much stronger than the coal used to form diamonds. I wonder if the new substance is thermally conductive....... it certianly could be!
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
We could make H1000 pencils that would write on *anything*. All we need now is for someone to create an eraser to match :-)
Viagra the little Graphite diamond? Diamonds for her and grahpite for him.
Upon first glance at that story one could point out a handful of blatantly false statements that the 'journalist' had embellished upon the presumed press release. To start with, the caption on the bizzare first image ignored atomic carbon (carbon black), nanotubes and the veritable zoo of non-C60 fullerenes.
Secondly the x-rays were not used to form the substance, but to analyse its structure. Hardness is not measured by an ability to crack, it's an ability to scratch. I could crack a diamond with a metal hammer, it doesn't make it harder.
The experimenter neatly summarises the novelty with "This experiment is the first to determine quantitatively how the bonding in graphite changes under high-pressure conditions.". But the article completely ignores what this new bonding is. These are not difficult diagrams. Diamond and graphite are simple to draw, where's the new one?
The summaries in the other stories crowding this one on the page are equally laughable. Anyone can see in the diagram of C60 that it doesn't have 60 sides. In fact if anyone can understand any of the images on the page then you're doing pretty well.
Finally, you've got to love this gem at the bottom:
"AD SPACE FOR SALE
THIS POSITION $4,000/YEAR
FOR 200x60 PIXEL BANNER
More Ad Rates".
Walk, don't run kids!
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
And if it is, can I make it into armor for my tank?
Yeah, that aggravated me too. Actually, even chemists consider buckys to be a third allotrope as carbon. As a chemist, I consider it bullshit for the same reason you mention. For what it's worth, Carbon-black is not pure carbon - it's a misture of large polynuclear hydrocarbons. It's graphite-like, but does contain hydrogen.
These are not difficult diagrams. Diamond and graphite are simple to draw, where's the new one?
I was annoyed by the same - fortunately, my school has a subscription to Science. Graphite, of course, is a planar, sp2 hybridized structure that forms layers of sheets. The sheets are staggered by half a ring, so that half of the carbons are centered over another carbon, and half are centered over the middle of a ring. Under high enough pressure, the carbons that are right over each other form a sigma bond. According to the article, this happens gradually over a range of like 10-20 GPa, with theoretically half the carbons ultimately forming interplane sigma bonds if one considered a two-plane system.
Unfortunately, even the Science article was stingy on the details (as they tend to be).
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
But it seems like a lot of people think that this graphite would actually be able to write, when it would cut through the desk, let alone the paper..
A substance thats harder then diamond and even more useless.
So now my pencils will break even faster. (harder usually equals more brittle not less).
Ahh I remember my youth, when I took a diamond earring and put it under my desk leg at school, sat down and presto, diamond dust.
Weird things you think of when the fever gets going.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I'm with you 99%.
maybe a extra 30 tesla boost/shock just after they ... i dunno ... squeeze them a bit
irradiated the electrons in the graphit to a
soup might
tighter together?
Why is it labeled "nano-tech"?
Cracking diamond is no big deal. Does it scratch it too?
Dorks. A hard form of graphite will not be used as a structural component.
No mention of hardness measurements (Mohs, Rockwell, Knoop).
Sorry for the rant, bad science reporting irks me.