Nobel Prize in Physics Today the Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to ah to physics physicists working in the U K Manchester Andre game and cost universal off and their two things that make it really unusual.

The first thing is, it's Nobel Prize.

That was one with a piece of settler tape, sticky tape.

And the other is It's the first Nobel prize where I've lost the bet on the cup of tea.

Yes, I know laundry going very well.

In fact, he was postdoc working here in Nottingham in the early nineties, and I also know cost here very well.

My colleague Mike said that this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry would be for graphene.

I said be for physics.

But he bet me either way that I would buy him a cup of tea and I'd lost well, what what laundry and costlier had was the crazy idea off making a transistor structure out of a single atomic sheet?

This is graphene.

It's a sheet of carbon atoms arranged in hexagons.

Now graphite is the thing that's inside this so called lead pencil that it's not lead in there.

It sze carbon in the form of graphite.

On def, we make a mark with a pencil.

What we're doing is we're depositing little sheets, atomic sheets of carbon on the paper on one single atomic layer off graph.

Graphite is called graphene, and this is a representation, but it's only one atom thick.

You can see a very large sheet, but very thin, very flexible.

On dhe, we can imagine graphite is just being layer on layer of this pile upon one upon another on dhe.

So what, Andre and cost you did.

They essentially took a lump of graphite and then got some scotch tape docility and stuck it on the surface and then peeled off layers off, uh, off carbon, these atomic layers, not perhaps one single air, but maybe 10 or 1500.

And now I'm going to try and do their experiment here in front of you.

Never tried it before.

Let's see if it works.

It begins with a piece of graphite is made up of lots of layers like this, stacked one on top of each other, thousands of millions in this tiny sample.

So what they did was they took a piece of sticky tape I don't know if it was this brand but stuff like this, and they put it on the top and pressed it down and just pulled it off.

But by repeating Lee sticking Maur sello tape on, they could peel off one atomic layer after another until eventually they could see just one single atomic layer off these carbon atoms.

And that was your graphene.

I think in this case I'd rather overdone it and taken off several sheets.

And then what they did is they found another surface and pushed the thing down and peeled off the cellar tape and it's stuck.

Mine hasn't stuck, so I wouldn't get the Nobel Prize for that.

I was very happy because they I know them both on.

They work in Britain, So it's great for Britain and wonderful for them.

So I should say to be raising my glasses in this evening.

What really excited physicists and chemists was that for the first time, you could have a single sheet where which was only one atom thick.

And so there are bones that on the atoms, which can interact with other things normally when they're stacked together, all these bonds are interacting between one layer another.

Here you have a single layer of carbon, and this has opened up a huge range of experiments.

What costume laundry did in Manchester was to look at the electronic properties off graphene on dhe.

They used what particular interest.

Of course, it wasn't just that they discovered the transistor, but they learned, Ah, who lot off new physics, which was really entirely unexpected.

I think in this case it is right that it was the Nobel Prize for physics because the rial interest in this material is the way that the electrons behave in these layers.

This is definitely a Nobel Prize in physics rather than chemistry, because I think it's fair to say I'm not a chemist.

But I think the chemistry off, off, graphite and graphing a fairly understood.

The big surprise was, If you make a little transistor out of this, all these interesting prop fundamental physics properties emerge.

So I think it's right that they should have got the Nobel Prize for physics.

It's interesting that Rutherford, who'd also being a scientist, that Manchester got the Nobel Prize for chemistry, and he didn't really respect chemists.

He's his own man So it was immediately an equal partnership.

No, he was.

I had a very strong ideas of science, and it was great pleasure and privilege working with him.

And, you know, they they both have very, very clear ideas of where they want to go to succeed in that project.

It's just remarkable if you I remember when they made the first transistor, the patience and dedication to try and get that TC this idea through to working devices just incredible.

Onda, as I've said, they were pretty small group in Manchester and all these other groups around the world, big groups breathing down their neck, but somehow costume on Andrea being able to keep ahead of the keep ahead of the field fantastic.