Carbon

Carbon is a bit of a hot topic at the moment, so I thought it might be a good day to talk about this piece:

The picture is of a necklace featuring a wood pendant with the element carbon as it is on a periodic table. Trees incorporate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into biomass, and by making objects from this wood the carbon remains stored (in a particularly geeky memento).

Carbon is a pretty amazing element. To me one of the most intriguing things about it is how many different forms it can take - from graphite (soft enough to use for writing) to diamond (one of the hardest materials known, and a fair bit more valuable than graphite!). My favourite of its allotropes are the fullerenes, particularly buckminsterfullerene (not least because they make fantastic modular origami pieces using PHiZZ units). Buckminsterfullerene is made of 60 carbon atoms, and is shaped like a soccer ball. One of its claims to fame is that it is the largest matter to have been shown to exhibit wave-particle duality.

I'm hoping to take this carbon on/ in wood idea a bit further with coasters, and maybe even some form of table.