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Jonathan Coleman and his son compare graphene-infused Silly Putty (left) with the unadulterated kids stuff.





Industrial scientists came up with the formula for Silly Putty about 70 years ago. They were looking for synthetic substitutes for rubber. It's basically a mixture of boric acid and silicone oil. But apart from turning it into a toy, nobody could really figure out what to do with it.

"It's got these strange properties but it never really found an application. So we thought, if we could make it do something, that would be cool," says Coleman.

Coleman mainly works with another unusual material, a remarkable form of carbon called graphene. Graphene comes in sheets barely an atom thick and is extremely good at conducting electricity.

One of his students had this funny idea: What if we mix graphene, with its electrical properties, with the Silly Putty and its strange bouncy, runny properties.

Turns out making a composite material using graphene and Silly Putty gives you a new material that is still runny and bouncy, but now conducts electricity and is extremely sensitive to pressure. Press on it just the tiniest amount, and you change its electrical resistance.

Coleman thinks there will be many applications for his new material. For example, he has shown that if you press a small blob of it against someone's carotid artery, you can measure not only the pulse but also blood pressure.

The research findings were published online Thursday by the journal Science.

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