[CTcard]

Okay CT, I don't get any of that, but what is this stuff likely to do for humanity?  Can we make something cool with it?  How about ultra light football helmets and shoulder pads to give our team an advantage?

My first, geeky-physicist answer is what it will do for humanity is increase our knowledge of how the universe is put together. It seems worthwhile to me that we, humanity, know about things like black holes, the big bang, and the Higgs Boson even if there won't be technology based on these any time soon. [Though I am working on my black hole garbage disposal unit.]

But, graphene probably will give us some technology. In fields connected to mine the applications people think about are 1) replacing silicon in transistors to make them smaller - so that your computers continue to get faster, smaller, and cheaper every year, 2) as the basis for building a quantum-computer which nominally could do certain types of caluclations way faster than anything now; particularly operations associated with encryption and unencryption (so the NSA cares about it) - but this is a long shot, and 3) because it's entirely surface area it should be a good sensor for all sorts of stuff - tiny amounts of pollutants, trouble in your car's engine, etc.

There are a whole lot of other things people are dreaming about, most of them either mostly fantasy or only small improvements on existing technology - but graphene will become part of the materials tool box of our technological society.
Here's wikipedia's article on potential applications: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_a...f_graphene

[CTcard]

Okay CT, I don't get any of that, but what is this stuff likely to do for humanity?  Can we make something cool with it?  How about ultra light football helmets and shoulder pads to give our team an advantage?

My first, geeky-physicist answer is what it will do for humanity is increase our knowledge of how the universe is put together. It seems worthwhile to me that we, humanity, know about things like black holes, the big bang, and the Higgs Boson even if there won't be technology based on these any time soon. [Though I am working on my black hole garbage disposal unit.]

But, graphene probably will give us some technology. In fields connected to mine the applications people think about are 1) replacing silicon in transistors to make them smaller - so that your computers continue to get faster, smaller, and cheaper every year, 2) as the basis for building a quantum-computer which nominally could do certain types of caluclations way faster than anything now; particularly operations associated with encryption and unencryption (so the NSA cares about it) - but this is a long shot, and 3) because it's entirely surface area it should be a good sensor for all sorts of stuff - tiny amounts of pollutants, trouble in your car's engine, etc.

There are a whole lot of other things people are dreaming about, most of them either mostly fantasy or only small improvements on existing technology - but graphene will become part of the materials tool box of our technological society.
Here's wikipedia's article on potential applications: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_a...f_graphene