SILLY PUTTY MAKES FOR SUPER-SENSITIVE SENSORS
ADD GRAPHENE TO GET DETECTORS THAT CAN MEASURE BREATHING, BLOOD PRESSURE—AND SPIDER FOOTSTEPS
By Sophie Bushwick
It’s easy to dismiss Silly Putty as a kid’s toy. But the stretchy material actually exhibits some surprising properties: It’s one of the softest plastics around, and it can behave like both a liquid and a solid, oozing when gently stretched but bouncing off surfaces like a rubber ball when hurled. And when you mix Silly Putty with graphene—strong, conductive carbon sheets with unusual physical properties—it becomes an incredibly sensitive strain detector that can track blood pressure, heart rate, and even a spider’s footsteps.Read more: http://www.popsci.com/silly-putty-makes-super-sensitive-sensorsIn Jonathan Coleman’s research group at Trinity College Dublin, the scientist and his team study two-dimensional molecules such as graphene and find applications for these flat nanomaterials. In addition, Coleman says, his lab likes to do “kitchen physics,” a tradition where they incorporate household objects into their research to make it more fun and accessible.
“In that vein,” Coleman says, “one of my students thought, ‘Well, Silly Putty is a kids toy, but it’s really just a polymer, and a lot of people mix graphene with polymers—so why don’t we mix graphene with Silly Putty and see what happens?’”
That graduate student, Connor Boland—who has since earned his doctorate—made a batch of graphene in water and added the Silly Putty polymer. As he mixed them, the graphene sheets stuck to the polymer, creating a black goo the researchers dubbed “g-putty.”
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What is that? Blue Venom? hahaha
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