Have you heard of Graphene? It was discovered in 2004, and has been hailed as the most important breakthroughs since the plastics revolution that was more than a century ago. It is a material that is made of one layer of carbon atoms, yet it is very strong. 200 times thinner than a human hair, yet 200 times stronger than steel. When it was first discovered, people thought it would make technologies straight out of a sci-fi movie. But here we are, a decade and a half later, still without those technologies. You might think that the process of discovering Graphene was really complicated, but it really isn’t. In fact, it’s so simple, that you can do it in your home. It was discovered by scientists by repeatedly sticking a piece of tape onto a piece of graphite and taking it off until they got exactly one layer of carbon. Graphene is very useful, from strengthening concrete, buildings, and even bicycle helmets, to making batteries faster charging. It is extremely useful, and be used for many purposes. It is very conductive, and so far, the only problem is that it is hard and expensive to produce. The current methods of producing graphene are very expensive, and can only produce very little amounts of Graphene at a time. Graphene can be used for many things, but the current problem is that it can not yet be mass produced. If we were to build big things with Graphene right now using (our) primitive methods, it would take a LOT of sticky tape.
