2010 Physics Nobel Prize (Graphene) | Hacker News Reader

2010 Physics Nobel Prize (Graphene)

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There's an excellent short overview (with many links) of why graphene matters here:

http://blog.joerg.heber.name/2010/10/05/great-the-physics-no...

It punctures some of the hype, while still conveying what's interesting.

I really liked this quote at the end of the press release

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2010/pr...

"Playfulness is one of their hallmarks, one always learns something in the process and, who knows, you may even hit the jackpot. Like now when they, with graphene, write themselves into the annals of science."

Congrats to the winners and especially to Konstantin Novoselov who is one of youngest to win a Nobel at age 36.

Geim's the guy who levitated the frog:

"Geim shared the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize with Sir Michael Berry of Bristol University, for levitating the frog. His award of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 made him the first person to win an Ig followed by the real version."

Badass. (Even if my physics past wants someone to win something big for work on silicates one day. Dammit, glasses are fascinating.)

Here is some more info and videos http://www.ru.nl/hfml/research/levitation/diamagnetic/

Here is the process of making graphene with a sticky tape -it was posted here a while ago. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=diy-graphen...

Anything involving cleaning with 'piranha' probably isn't really a DIY project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piranha_solution#Safety

"...a suitable candidate, prior to using Piranha, is 98% sulphuric acid."

Anything involving 98% H2SO4 is probably not properly described as "DIY" project either...

Andre Geim is quite a character. He won the Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for floating a frog (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners#...).

He also chose his hamster as co-author for one of his articles:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0921-4526(00)00753-5

Here is their most popular graphene paper (open access in Nature Materials)

http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v6/n3/full/nmat1849.html

Sixty Symbols has already a video out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6ZBkpWqrzg

Although I'm congratulating both of them , it's a prize for engineering achievement not a physics discovery. Shows how the physics field is stagnant.

From Alfred Nobel's Will: "...The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics;..."

According to that a price for physics is awarded to both a discovery as well as an invention and this would be the latter.

http://nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/will-full.html

Yes, it is more of an engineering achievement than a physics discovery, but I would not read much more into it. The nobel prize is very frequently given to more of an 'engineering' discovery, as it's goal is to be given to the achievements which benefit man the most.

Just look at several Nobel prizes. The invention of radio, the invention of special gas valves used in lighthouses,the invention of the cloud chamber, the invention of the laser, the invention of the ion trap, etc.

Physics is still very active, but unfortunately we can't be discovering QED everyday.

I suggest reading through at least 0.1% of the tens of thousands of papers which have been published on the subject of graphene alone in the last five years before declaring the entire field of physics to be stagnant.

I understand your point; but myth_drannon was saying that research on graphene is more engineering than physics. I know that engineering and physics overlap; but not sure if this research is engineering or physics; or who decides which is which.

I think the process by which they discovered their synthesis method qualifies as experimental physics. Keep in mind that it is still hugely infeasible to produce industrial quantities of the stuff.

Also, as the parent says, a review of the literature shows a wealth of interesting physics being done with the material, much of it unencumbered by aspirations of possible engineering applications.

I think this is semantics: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1760580

"I think this is semantics"

Of course; semantics refers to meaning of words; obviously disagreement between two parties will be about the meaning of words. Probably, you mean "polemics."

Physicists are professional doctors of philosophy; by tradition; they own the right to define any theoretical subject and they defined physics as the fundamental science defining nature; which is not correct. Physics is just one way of looking at nature.

> Probably, you mean "polemics."

No, I mean this is a confusion about the meaning of a word (namely, "physics") not a dispute about facts (empirical or normative).

By the way, saying an argument boils down to semantics is not vacuous. If I disagree with Bob about whether the moon will be full tonight, we have no disagreement or misunderstanding about the meaning of words.

"this is a confusion about the meaning of a word (namely, "physics")"

I agree; http://science1.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/definition-of-physi... "physics" is a pun; and this is how physicists like it.

I think you're belittling their work.

The Nobel Prize wasn't just for the method of extracting graphene, it was for 'groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene'. This includes extracting, identifying and characterizing the material.

Interesting to note, by the way, that the real innovation was in being able to identify (and characterize) the material - the same extraction method was used by another team.

To me, this is the essence of science - observing a phenomena (in this case - a material) and understanding it.

Equating Experimental Physics 'engineering' is a little to 'Sheldonistic' for me.

Your comment and the replies are basically just disagreeing about semantics. In basically any use of the word "physics" for organizations (like "physics departments", "Nobel prize in physics", the "American Physical Society"), "physics" is a discipline which is much broader than simply the search for new fundamental physical laws. It basically includes any field that uses the training and techniques useful for searching for new fundamental physical laws. For example: condensed matter, optics, astronomy, astrophysics, quantum computing. That is, physics organizations (like most academic organizations) are united by a common set of training and techniques, not a common objective. This is just a fact about the useful way to organize human beings.

But, if you are defining "physics" to mean "fundamental physics"---i.e. new laws of nature--then...

(1) There hasn't been a confirmed theoretical physics discovery since 1967 when the Higgs mechanisms completed the Standard Model (although some might argue that the profoundly new understanding of existing fundamental physical law provided by asymptotic freedom, in 1973, qualifies as fundamental physics even if no fundamental laws were discovered per se).

(2) There hasn't been a non-trivial (in the sense of being both not-easily-predicted by theory, like the top quark, and not trivially incorporated into existing theory, like neutrino masses) discovery in experimental physics since 1973-4, when the electroweak and strong theories were more or less confirmed. (It doesn't qualify as "easily predicted" since there were serious doubts beforehand.)

There are possible exceptions to (2), depending on which experiments you consider to be most important for dark energy, dark matter, and cosmology/CMB. There haven't really been any decisive experiments---only a steady accumulation of evidence. I wouldn't consider any theory related to these three as confirmed.

So yes, the field of fundamental physics is profoundly stagnant.

(This is just the best historical understanding of a myself, a grad student, so I could be wrong or disagreed with by more prestigious physicists. Take it with a grain of salt.)

So when will we see mass produced graphene? Also same question for carbon nano-tubes.

What are the obstacles waiting to be overcome?

Is this physics or chemistry?

Let me rephrase, since I am interested in the answer and am not sure why I'm getting downvotes. Why is graphene awarded a Noble in Physics, while buckyballs were awarded a Noble in Chemistry in 1996? Is it because fullerene occurs in nature?

The main reason is probably that physicists found graphene more interesting to study than buckyballs. This can be quantified by looking at the number of articles published in top physics-only journals (e.g. Physical Review Letters).

There are a couple of good reasons why so: (i) graphene has a "simple" electronic and atomic structure that has interesting features of its own (Google for the Dirac cone), (ii) graphene flakes are big compared to buckies, so it's possible to study them with common methods that physicists like -- electronic transport, crystallographic methods, you name it, and (iii) many proposed applications of graphene e.g. in electronics fall close to physics.

In short: physicist are fond of simple things, and graphene is simple. So, Nobel prize in physics.

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