Sounds of the World’s Smallest Guitar: Experiments with Graphene

Benjamin Alaman, a post doctoral student at UCSB, spoke about his research in the applications of nano-scale chemistry. Benjamin’s work focuses on the potential uses of a world that operates under different laws than our own, in which objects have the ability to be in multiple places at once. For example, graphene, a sheet of carbon atoms only a single atom thick, can serve as an archival memory system that would last for billions of years or be rolled into tiny tubes that would transmit information as the world’s smallest radio. While nano-technology seems like science fiction, it is already used in numerous military and civilian products, such as radiation detectors.