PoP Book 06.2s MidRes - Flipbook - Page 12
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the Geim family pet — a hamster called Tisha — with levitation experiments which got a lot of attention both inside and outside the physics
community.3 They ended up earning Andre Geim an Ig Nobel prize
— the parody award given annually to ‘honor achievements that first
make people laugh, and then make them think.’ They excited kids
and students all around the planet, and even fellow scientists who jostle
to meet Andre at conferences just because of his flying frog.
Andre Geim’s Friday Night Experiments became a key part of his work.
A marker of his ‘commitment to scientific adventure (‘search, not
re-search’).’ A chance to get back to the free space of enquiry where
accidents can steer things in exciting unplanned directions.
•
As you may well know, Geim and his team went on to isolate a hexagonal
lattice of pure carbon atoms.4 They named it Graphene — the thinnest,
strongest substance known to science. It’s said that if you take a square
metre of the stuff, a thousand times thinner than this paper, it’s tough
enough to cradle a 4 kg cat, but weighs no more than one of its whiskers.5
Its potential is so huge that £61 million was spent building a National
Graphene Institute, and consultants estimate a $70 billion market for
graphene semiconductors alone by 2030.6
Importantly for Andre and his research partner Kostya Novoselov, the
real Nobel committee decided it was worthy of the 2010 Prize for physics.
Importantly for us, the committee made a big point about the hallmark
‘playfulness’ of Geim’s research process.
•
Ok. Now we have play lifting people’s emotions in a crisis on one hand,
and helping to earn Nobel Prizes on the other, so maybe that gives
a clear signal what we’re exploring here might be more than just fun.
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Introduction / Flying
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