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So carbon is an extraordinarily important element. The mass
of carbon 12 is used as the standard for measuring the
weight of all the other atoms on the periodic table.
So carbon it’s around us everywhere, we are all carbon, there
is lots of carbon in us, even more than the hydrocarbons
within our body, lots of the structures inside us and many of
the materials which we use every day. In fact the majority of
us use carbon in the form of fuel in our cars to get to work or
to go home.
It is also, of course, the basis of all the life, the so-called
organic compounds which make up you and me, but also the
element carbon itself is also quite exciting. And it exists in a
number of forms, for example here is amorphous carbon,
that’s carbon that does not have any particular form. This is
an element such as you would use in a gas mask, the gas
goes in here, the poisonous material is absorbed and clean air
comes through here so you can breathe in and out through
there.
So carbon is an extremely common element, but it comes in
a number of different alatropes, so different forms. And this
one here, this is actually some charcoal, which is just simple
carbons, very, very similar in fashion to graphite.
It is also, I think that carbon is the element which has
perhaps been the subject of one of the most exciting
developments the whole time I have been a chemist. When
Harry Kroto and his colleagues discovered so-called
buckminster fullerene, this molecule C60 which has the shape
of a football, which nobody had imagined would exist and be
stable and now chemists all over the world are using it and
not only can you get carbon arranged as footballs, but they
now realised that you can arrange them as long tubes, so-
called nano-tubes, and you can even put the C60 the football
inside the nano tube. And one of my young colleagues here in
Nottingham is making what are called nano-peapods where
you put these balls of C60 all the way along a nano-tube just
like the peas in a pod
So carbon comes as graphite, as diamond, and also as bucky-
balls or fullerenes. So the carbon here which is a bit like the
graphite is very amorphous and it’s very, very free-flowing.
So we are going to pour a little bit of the carbon on to the
paper so you can see. So you can see it is a very light
powder, a very dark powder and you can see it is a very nice
easily manoeuvrable, easily workable material, very beautiful
material. Often used as a lubricant in the form of a graphite
which is very, very soft in one dimension but also the other
allotrope of carbon, which is diamond, is extremely hard; one
of the hardest materials known to us. Very, very unreactive
and perhaps it’s why we give it to our loved ones as
engagement rings.