The qualities of this material are what make this discovery truly useful. It is a conductor and allegedly stronger than steel. Although this futuristic material itself deserves the creators grand recognition, I think the Nobel Prize may have been awarded to them due to their creativity in their method.
In an interview with Novoselov from the official Nobel Prize website after his nomination, he brought up the simplicity of the concept that led to this creation, these "friday night experiments".
" ...we just try to be curious in everything and most important is to have fun. So Andre introduced this habit of Friday evening experiments which ... where you do just crazy things and then some of them sometimes come out, sometimes not. And basically graphene was one of those as well."
The New York Times published an article yesterday that delves deeper into this idea of a regular designated period of time allotted for them to just go wild and work on whatever projects they feel drawn to, no matter how strange they seem.
"In one of them, Dr. Geim managed to levitate a frog in a magnetic field, for which he won an Ig Nobel — a parody award for “improbable research” — in 2000. On another occasion they produced a “gecko tape” that mimicked the way geckos and Spider-Man can walk on the ceiling."
The pair of physicists managed to successfully separate graphene from graphite in a pencil lead using scotch tape to peel off particles of lead, and continue the process until they were left with graphene strips. This approach was so simple, it took the world by surprise. This is a great success story and an example of how just letting go and having fun can lead to the greatest of creations.
Design doesn't always come from necessity, sometimes it just comes from a want, a passion, or just plain old curiosity. I have heard of this kind of encouragement to just create for fun on a regular basis. I know that a few companies have instituted this as well, which I think is a fantastic way to promote productivity and innovation (to use the word lightly). This is the workplace of the future, where everyone's ideas are valuable and creative approaches are encouraged wholeheartedly.
Further Reading on Geim and Novoselov and Graphene:
Further Reading on Geim and Novoselov and Graphene:
- Scientific American - an article on the discovery
- Los Angeles Times - an overview of graphene's value
- The Wired - a great in-depth look at the material of graphene
- Science Watch - wonderful interview with Novoselov where he gets into details about the experiments and their process.
- The Rise of Graphene - Geim and Novoselov's detailed scientific paper
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