"Sam Wormley" <swormley1@mchsi.com> wrote in message
news:Pqhid.294244$wV.274714@attbi_s54...

Sam Wormley wrote:

Carbon makes its mark (Nov 3)
Ref: http://physicsweb.org/article/world/17/11/1

Once upon a time carbon was just another element to physicists, of
interest mostly for its ability to perform calculations on the backs

of

envelopes and other pieces of paper. Even though life itself was

based

on the sixth element of the periodic table and carbon had many
industrial applications, the interests of most physicists lay

elsewhere:

hydrogen; the various isotopes of helium; semiconductors such as
silicon, germanium and gallium arsenide; uranium and so forth. And

when

the naturally occurring elements were not enough, new ones were

created.

How things have changed. Two breakthroughs in the fairly recent

past -

the discovery of the fullerenes (starting with carbon-60) in the

mid-1980s,

followed by the production of the first carbon nanotubes in the early

1990s -

have led to an explosion in the number of research papers on the

mechanical,

electronic and other properties of carbon-based materials.

On page 33 Michael Coey and Stefano Sanvito describe the mysterious
magnetic properties of carbon. At first sight carbon seems to be a

most

unpromising raw material for making magnets. The basic ingredients of

any

magnet are atoms that contain unpaired electrons, and the six

electrons in

a typical carbon like to form pairs.

See: http://physicsweb.org/article/world/17/11/1

The magnetism of carbon (Nov 3)
http://physicsweb.org/article/world/17/11/7
Carbon is about to join the list of ferromagnetic elements, but the
origins of its magnetic properties remain a mystery

Checkout Pyrolytic Carbon First, it is just the opposite of a magnet

NdFeB Pyrolytic Graphite Levitation Kit- Fun & Amazing

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1467&item=5531037625&rd=1

Pyrolytic graphite is one of the most diamagnetic materials currently known
to man which will operate at room temperature. Most superconductors are
hugely diamagnetic but obviously will not work at room temperature so are
not practical for you & me :(
Put in very simple terms diamagnetism is a materials ability to repel
magnetic fields. It will push away from magnetic fields - it doesn't matter
if its north or south pole it will still repel it.

Pyrolytic graphite is both very hard to find and also very expensive. This
is due to the extremes required to make this synthetic material: To make
pyrolytic graphite, methane gas at low pressure is heated to around 2000
degrees celsius & very slowly (1/1000 inch per hour!) a layer of graphite
grows. Graphite produced this way is extremely highly ordered and the carbon
atoms form a crystal like structure of hexagonal sheets.