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Researchers Make Graphene From Girl Scout Cookies
An anonymous reader writes "Last year we learned that the miracle material graphene could be made from common table sugar, and now researchers at Rice University have taken the discovery one step further by literally baking it from a box of girl scout cookies. A group of graduate students led by chemist James Tour recently teamed up with Houston Girl Scout troop 25080 to perform the feat using a single box of Trefoil cookies — which could potentially yield $15 billion worth of graphene."
The previous poster is right about supply and demand...
If this is really so easy that it produced $15 billion worth, then the price of graphene is about to plummet.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
... to perform the feat using a single box of Trefoil cookies — which could potentially yield $15 billion worth of graphene
It could potentially reduce the price of $15 billion worth of graphene to a single box of Terfoil cookies. Here, fixed that for you.
TFA doesn't imply that it's simple to make ; merely that anything containing carbon can be used as raw material. The reason graphene is so valuable is precisely because it is so difficult to make on an industrial scale.
Because at the rate the dollar is going, in 5 years $15 billion is only going to buy you a box of girl scout cookies. And I'll take thinmint.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
No, it's an important way to get girls involved in research, so that they can learn at an early age that girls can do many different things, such as bake cookies for scientists.
The most exalted rulers of France used to dine on aluminum tableware, as aluminum was more valuable than gold. Then we discovered how to electrolytically extract it from sand. Now we package sugar water in it. The first time they made aluminum that way, they got super rich as they sold just under the amount it was going for, and the price just kept going down from there.
Judging from how much carbon I create whenever I try baking, I"m sure there has to be a butt load of graphene in the oven
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
NOT pointless. It shows that the impurities in the starting material are irrelevant to the process, meaning that this process is going to make graphene cheaper than paper before long.
This is equivalent to someone inventing a process for producing super-high quality silicon from sandy mud without purification steps. Currently, only the highest grade of silica can be used for manufacturing of that type.
I'm pretty sure you don't *create* any carbon when you are baking.
At that point there won't be any Girl Scout cookies left to buy, since the Girl Scouts will have switched to selling graphene.
They will however trademark the name "Very, Very Thin Mint".
"calculated that at the then-commercial rate for pristine graphene -- $250 for a two-inch square -- a box of traditional shortbread Girl Scout Cookies could turn a $15 billion profit."
So it definitely doesn't cost more to make than it's worth. They've already done the calculation and the $15bil was just the profit.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Another interesting fact along the same lines is the cap on the Washington Monument is also made out of aluminum for the same reason. To quote the Wikipedia article on the Washington Monument:
it was finally completed, with the 100 ounce (2.85 kg) aluminum tip/lightning-rod being put in place on December 6, 1884. The tip was the largest single piece of aluminum cast at the time, when aluminum commanded a price comparable to silver. Two years later, the Hall–Héroult process made aluminum easier to produce and the price of aluminum plummeted, making the once-valuable tip nearly worthless
Time to offend someone
Soylent Graphene?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I'll have to cut back on my cookie consumption...
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I used to think you Americans and your obsession with girlscout cookies were weird in a sort of cutesy way.
Then a few years ago my dad brought some thin mints back from a business trip to the US, a colleague had evidently been selling them in the office.
Now I understand.
I don't know how things are where you live, but here Girl Scouts don't bake cookies. They just buy mass produced packages in bulk and resell with markup. This adequately prepares them for functioning in our society that no longer produces anything, and, evidently, doesn't even want to.
They're addictive because they put crack in the girl scout cookies.
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
How do we know these cookies are made from real Girl Scouts? The could be substituting girl Scots for all we know.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Researcher: The girl-scout-derivative graphene is also delicious.
Girl Scout: That's good!
Researcher: But it is exceedingly expensive, even compared to the price of your cookies.
Girl Scout: That's bad!
Researcher: But each short ton of graphene is delivered with a free box of Tagalongs.
Girl Scout: That's good!
Researcher: The Tagalongs are similarly cursed.
Girl Scout: Cursed?
Researcher: Delicious but exceedingly expensive.
Girl Scout: Oh, that's bad.
Researcher: Don't get me started on the Samoas.
Girl Scout: Can I go home now?
"The first time they made aluminum that way, they got super rich as they sold just under the amount it was going for. . ."
I was thinking about this once, in the context of thinking about the Polywell Reactor. For those unfamiliar with it, it is a proposed type of fusion reactor, whose proponents think it might possibly be able to produce very cheap electric power. Nobody really knows if that'll pan out or not, but I got to thinking about this:
*IF* it did work out (not saying it will), and you could produce power with it a cost of say, 1 cent per kWh of electricity (or even less; not saying you will be able to, but just for the sake of argument), then whoever brings online the very first Polywell stands to make enormous profits - if you figure an average market price of about 10 cents per kWh for electricity, all the owners/operators have to do is sell for 1 or 2 cents below the average price, and they'll likely sell the electricity (they don't even necessarily have to be the cheapest in the market, just cheap enough to undercut some of the more expensive providers).
So, I was trying to puzzle out if this was a market failure, or a market success. I mean, my first thought was that it was somewhat unjust to sell the power at more than say, a 10 or 20 percent profit (after all, every company must make a profit to survive, but doesn't need to make 800-1000% profit.
But, I kept thinking about it, and I decided that such levels of profitability would do 2 things: First, it would allow that company to have the funds to start building a lot more of the new technology, which long-term would have a lot of benefits for society as a whole - in the case of a clean, nearly 100% safe power source which produces no long-lived waste problems, it would solve the energy crisis for the world, so those huge profits would mean that the superior technology can quickly replace the old, incumbent technologies, instead of fighting an uphill battle for a century or two. That is to say, if the technology was forced to limit itself to small profit margins, then larger companies could overcome the technological superiority of the new power company's polywell reactor by using marketing tactics that would forstall the growth of the new tech, based on the sheer size of the installed base and revenues of the old companies.
Secondly, very large profit margins would cause other companies to sit up and take notice, and cause them to decide to dump their old technologies sooner that they otherwise might, to license/buy the new technology of their own. What this means is that huge profit margins due to a new technology which dramatically reduces the costs of production of some commodity, will only be a temporary situation - the market *will* gradually (but perhaps fairly quickly - e.g. if the polywell reactor worked that well and produced power that cheaply, you could maybe start to see power prices come down 5 percent per year for like 20 years in a row, until prices reached a new equilibrium based upon the real costs of production).
Short term large profit margins reward the inventors and investors who designed, then implemented the new technology. Longer-term, the prices will come down and everyone will benefit.