Remember the first time an adult told you that your lead pencil was not lead? He/she probably told you that because lead is toxic, the "lead" in your pencil was actually graphite. However, the graphite was still called "lead" because it indicated that something was in your pencil that allowed you to write like the former lead substance.
That brings up a lot of different uses for graphite. Surprisingly, this material does a lot more than just write on paper in school. Graphite material distribution is widespread. That is because this material has some very unique properties. If you want to know more about graphite, the following is provided.
It Conducts Electricity
If your science teacher in school never performed an experiment using graphite from pencils, you missed out on one of the coolest properties of graphite ever. It is the only non-metal substance that is able to conduct electricity. That is something worth remembering should you ever need to pass electrical current along while avoiding metal items to do it.
It Is the Base Material in Graphene, One of the Strongest Materials Ever Manufactured
Imagine taking this soft, powdery substance found in your pencils and transforming it into one of the hardest substances on the planet. That is essentially what happens when graphite becomes graphene. More to the point, graphene is the base structural material of graphite and other carbon substances, but graphene is still manufactured through an extraction process. If you could get enough graphene together to form a bar of itself, it would be completely transparent and would not break until more than 130.5 GPa (which is definitely a lot!).
It Is Magnetic, Too
If being able to conduct electricity and having one of the strongest extracted materials at the base was not enough, graphite can be magnetized. It is such a strange and fascinating material, but its bizarre properties are exactly what makes it so useful in so many ways. Not surprisingly, its magnetic qualities are exactly what make it ideal for children's toys such as magnetic putty, drawing boards with magnetic tracers, and magnetic balls in games and toys that require a magnetized ball. In all of the above, lead was once used, but because of lead's toxicity, it had to be replaced with something that could work the same. For that, and for everything else that lead was part of, graphite was the right, non-toxic substitute.
To learn more, reach out to a graphite material distribution center.
Share18 March 2019
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