- #1
abrogard
- 99
- 3
I was thinking about the forces holding atoms together.
Some materials seem very, very strong.
But if we take thinner and thinner slices of any material it is easy to imagine that pretty soon no matter what material it is we'll have a slice so thin it would be difficult not to tear it.
So what if we had a slice one atom thick, or deep, say graphene, maybe, would it be strong enough to hold itself together if we draped it over a finger tip? Would it fly apart if we blew on it? If we pulled it apart would we actually feel the strength of it, would it be that strong?
Trying to find out I only discovered tables of bond energies showing, for instance, that tungsten has a bond energy of 849 kJ/mo, diamond 713 and MgO 1000. So that's obviously not the right direction for me to look.
Some materials seem very, very strong.
But if we take thinner and thinner slices of any material it is easy to imagine that pretty soon no matter what material it is we'll have a slice so thin it would be difficult not to tear it.
So what if we had a slice one atom thick, or deep, say graphene, maybe, would it be strong enough to hold itself together if we draped it over a finger tip? Would it fly apart if we blew on it? If we pulled it apart would we actually feel the strength of it, would it be that strong?
Trying to find out I only discovered tables of bond energies showing, for instance, that tungsten has a bond energy of 849 kJ/mo, diamond 713 and MgO 1000. So that's obviously not the right direction for me to look.