Interview with a frog-levitating graphene tinkerer

Sean O’Neill, in New Scientist, interviews Andre Geim, who has shared (with different collaborators) both an Ig Nobel Prize in physics (for his work on teh substance graphene) and a Nobel Prize in physics. Here’s the final portion of that interview: From tinkering on the fringes to Nobel glory … You have worked in many […]

Graphene from Girl Scout Cookies

Technology Review reports: One box of shortbread cookies can be made into $15 billion of nanomaterials. by KATHERINE BOURZAC To chemists, carbon is just carbon. But graphene, the ultrathin material whose strength, flexibility, and high conductivity is promising for electronics, is one of the more costly forms of the element. High quality graphene is commonly […]

Brandishing a handgun — for science!

Eric Weddle reports, in jconline: When Herbert C. Brown, Purdue University’s first Nobel Prize winner, walked into a hall at Harvard University circa 1960 and laid a handgun on the table, his audience got the point.”There was a joke going around that he should come armed because there was a lot of controversy at the […]