Graphene: The Superstrong, Superthin, and Superversatile Material That Will Revolutionize the World

If you like science, particularly physics and chemistry, and the progressive course of great technological discoveries, Graphene will give you plenty of enjoyable reading material. Les Johnson and Joseph Meany assembled a story of one of the most significant discoveries of the past few decades, graphene. Like the practical use of the microwave as our basic indispensable appliance, graphene was also an accidental discovery. This book is a history of its predecessors until its discovery relatively recently. Since graphene is only one atom thin, the authors start off with the discussion of atomic theories and their history over the centuries. Made up of the single element carbon, they extend their discussion into graphene’s two close cousins, graphite and diamond, then onto graphene’s predecessors, carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, and buckminsterfullerenes. The authors’ writing is very good, and the book reads like a good novel even though it’s an academic volume with superscripts referring to Notes at the end. There are only a few illustrations throughout. Discussing graphene’s application, they claim that this new material is the hottest topic in material science. Moreover, it conducts electricity ten times better than pure iron. This is a fascinating science and technology book.