Physics made fascinating at USQ

Theoretical physicist Professor John Dobson shows a piece of graphite, which is used to make graphene, to Aldridge High students Mitchell Krome and Sherri Fletcher, and teacher Ian Carson

It’s hard to believe that frogs can fly or a hammock weighing less than a gram could support the weight of a cat. But it’s possible, according to a theoretical physicist who visited Hervey Bay in August.

Professor John Dobson spoke about physics discoveries to an audience of high school physics students at the University of Southern Queensland Fraser Coast.

The lecture was part of the two-week Queensland Youth Science tour by the Australian Institute of Physics (AIP).

Professor Dobson focused his talk on the ground-breaking experiments of 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics winners Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov.

One of the men initially proved that he could levitate a frog in thin air.

Later the two of them carried out pioneering research on graphene, which comes from graphite and is a one-atom-thick film of carbon which is strong, flexible and conducts electricity and has huge potential in high-tech applications.

Professor Dobson said it was so thin that it was regarded as two-dimensional. But it has the appearance of lattice.

He said experiments showed that if you could make a square metre of graphene and tie the ends you could make a hammock which weighed only point-eight of a thousandth of a gram and yet it would support the weight of a cat.

‘For something one atom thick, that’s pretty extraordinary,’ he said.

‘This leads to all sorts of possibilities where graphene could be embedded into other materials to strengthen them.

‘Graphene, because of its purity and two-dimensionality, is a spectacular conductor of heat.

‘One of the biggest problems in the modern electronics industry is that you can’t get rid of the heat that high-speed computing processes make.

‘Graphene could probably solve that problem.’

As a material it is completely new. It is completely transparent, yet so dense that a tiny gas atom could not pass through it.

Professor Dobson said discoveries like the graphene experiments inspired young minds like those who attended the lecture at USQ Fraser Coast.

Contact Details:

Katrina Corcoran, USQ Media, +61 7 4194 3167
25/08/2011