Video: Converting Girl Scout cookies into graphene (and $15 billion)

    Aug. 10, 2011

    It's time for a quick chemistry quiz. How do you make graphene? If you said 'using Girl Scout cookies,' you are correct. Graphene is an ultra thin material with strength, flexibility and high conductivity. With a promising future in electronics, graphene is one of the more costly forms of carbon. Graphene can be grown from any sugar, including Girl Scout cookies.

    It's time for a quick chemistry quiz. How do you make graphene? If you said 'using Girl Scout cookies,' you are correct. Graphene is an ultra thin material with strength, flexibility and high conductivity. With a promising future in electronics, graphene is one of the more costly forms of carbon. Graphene can be grown from any sugar, including Girl Scout cookies.

    In this video, graduate students in the Rice University lab of chemist James Tour show a troop of Houston Girl Scouts how any carbon source can become graphene.

    One box of girl scouts cookies weighs 255 grams and can be made into 157,800 m2 of grapheme, enough to cover 29.5 football fields. The price for that amount of grapheme is $15,290,697,674. Wow.

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