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The above was written for the interested layperson who wants to learn more about science. It provides some context for our manuscript that has recently appeared in Nature.

What boundary conditions would allow failure to occur in the gauge length and not at or near the clamps? One is not allowed (in suggesting ways of overcoming stress concentation at the clamps) to create defects in the nanotube or nanowire, to configure the region where failure will occur.  Thus, it is not possible (or is it?)  to create an analog of dog-bone specimens by, e.g., milling away part of the nanowire with a focused ion beam, etc., because this creates defects in the nanowire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk

I was surprised several years ago when delving into the literature to not find any references about addition of nanoparticles to ice, to study their impact on the mechanics of ice.  In short, to make nanocomposites where the matrix is ice.  So, with 2 high school students from IMSA, the Illinois Math and Science Academy, we set about (with their limited time for a bit of research) to try adding some nanoparticles to water and to freeze it.  The students simply used their home freezers to do this, and their mechanics measurements were with a hammer and chisel...

It seems to me that tetrahedral bonding is responsible for life on earth. 

One might leap to the (reasonable) conclusion that I am referring to the element carbon and its ability to form sp3 bonds.  Life does depend on carbon, no doubt. But where does life exist, by and large?

17 years ago, while a postdoc at IBM meant to be doing other things, I thought about the following. Then recently I visited Ali Argon at MIT, and we discussed conventional bubble rafts and how useful they had been in studies of some problems in mechanics...such as of defects and so on.

The discovery of a new material type, graphene and extremely thin platelets of graphite, was discussed in several articles from my research group published in 1999:

Lu XK, Huang H, Nemchuk N, and Ruoff RS, Patterning of highly oriented pyrolytic graphite by oxygen plasma etching, APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS, 75, 193-195 (1999).

I just jointed iMechanica. Great blog site! I thought to bring to your attention another blog that I enjoy, run by a retired engineer, on renewable energy issues. Here is the link: http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/