Next meter you ’re inspire an total box of Girl Scout shortbread cookie , just think of the electric potential you ’re wasting : a full$15 billion worth of graphene . At least , that ’s the estimate given by a squad of Rice University research worker working on a daring .
Published as part of a paper recently published by ACS Nano , the Rice science laboratory ’s work on Girl Scout Cookies begin when research laboratory chemist James Tour mentioned at a group meeting that his team had turned mesa sugar to graphene — a one - mote - thick layer of C possessing singular properties of effectiveness and conductivity . He claim that he and his grad students could grow graphene from any carbon source , and it just so occur there were Girl Scout Cookies being passed around the meeting .
And so a challenge was born . The science lab invited Girl Scout Troop 25080 to link them in Rice ’s nano lab to see exactly how cooky become a prized version of carbon . In their demonstration , they made graphene from a grasp of materials — grass , coffee , a cockroach leg , even click excrement ( exceptional thanks to Sid Vicious the mini dachshund ) to show that high - quality graphene is fundamentally waitress to be extracted from all kinds of everyday materials .
To make graphene , the Rice squad uses a copper foil and a ace - hot argon and hydrogen natural gas oven burn at more than 1,900 degrees . In this mental process , the target it placed on one side of the hydrofoil and , under high passion , begins to break up . A thin mainsheet of graphene forms on the other side of the transparency , while the residuum and dross remain on the other side .
Two of the grad student in Tour ’s lab did some math given the current commercial price for quality graphene — about $ 250 per two - inch second power — and figure that a box seat of shortbread cookies could generate a roughly $ 15 billion profit if converted to graphene .
Of course , that has everything to do with scale , supply , and demand . Right now , graphene is hard and expensive to grow in large quantities . A box of shortbread cookie could give a rag of graphene that would hide three football fields if the means of yield were there . And of course of instruction if supply were that cheap the price would drop substantially .
In other words , the team was attempt to demonstrate that — give better manufacture means of produce graphene in bulk — sources of graphene are all around us , not that you should corrupt Thin Mints as longsighted - term investing . Although in this saving you might actually amount out onward .
[ Science Daily , Image Credit : Rice University ]
Popular Science is your wormhole to the future . Reporting on what ’s raw and what ’s next in scientific discipline and technology , we rescue the future tense now .
Science
Daily Newsletter
Get the unspoiled tech , skill , and culture tidings in your inbox daily .
newsworthiness from the future , delivered to your nowadays .
You May Also Like
