I'm currently doing some work on a presentation about graphene, and have come across numerous articles which claim something along the lines of
It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap / Cling Film.
My question is, is there any proof / calculations to back up this claim? Every article I come across seems to be very similar and I cannot find the original source which might contain proof, or a link the relevant paper/study
Sources
Best Answer
oh no! it appears I'm too late.. so this is a popular claim, and further popularized by Michio Kaku (youtube). Hover, graphene cannot be as thin as cling film. Why? because graphene by definition is an atomically thin substance! It's literally one layer of graphite, which is how it was discovered. Saran wrap is literally a million times thicker than a sheet of graphene. So, what happens if we stack graphene up to this thickness? We're back at graphite, and that thickness of graphite will not sustain the pressure of your foot, let alone an elephant!
Hypothetically, what if graphene was enlarged to a thickness of saran wrap, and was only an atom thick? Well, that's a silly question, because not even nuclear physics allows that possibility.
So that answer is: no.