10-20 cm Nano-tubes

--- Al Globus wrote:
> 10-20 cm ropes of single walled carbon nanotubes have now been built.

This is quite promising although we still have a long way to go. Sounds much
better then the 3 cm we were talking about not that long ago.

> "Direct Synthesis of Long Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Strands," H.W.
> Zhu, C. L. Xu, D. H. Wu, B. Q Wei, R. Vajtai, and P.M. Ajayan, Science
> Volume 296, pages 884-886, 3 may 2002 reports synthesis of 10-20 cm
> ropes of single walled carbon nanotubes. Stress testing indicates a
> Young's modulus of 77 GPascal. The theoretical Young's modulus of a
> single carbon naontube is about 1000 GPascal.
>
> This is a big step towards a space elevator, although we still need a
> eight orders of magnitude in length and perhaps a factor 10 in strength.
>
> Can anyone give a good explanation of Young's modulus?

Stress over Strain :)

I couldn't be bothered doing a good one.