What is lightest known substance

Months later, a substance called "Aerographite" with a density of just 0. Now, a new material has assumed the throne. In a Nature paper titled " Solid carbon, springy and light ," scientists from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China have introduced a graphene aerogel that comes in at just 0. As a point of reference, that's less than one-seventh the density of air. And while it's still twice as dense as hydrogen, it's the very first ultralight substance to achieve a mass-to-volume ratio less than helium's, 0.

The lightest or least dense element that is a metal is lithium. Lithium is atomic number 3 on the periodic table, with a density of 0. This is comparable to the density of pine wood. But, like other alkali metals , lithium is highly reactive, so it rapidly reacts to release heat and form lithium hydroxide and hydrogen gas.

It also burns in air, so the pure metal is stored under oil where it also floats or in an inert atmosphere. Under ordinary conditions, only two other metallic elements are light enough to float on water: potassium and sodium. The density of potassium is 0. Lithium, potassium, and sodium are all alkali metals.

The reason they are so light is because these elements are the first atoms in their period on the periodic table to gain an additional electron shell. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile.

Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph. Chemistry Expert. Helmenstine holds a Ph. She has taught science courses at the high school, college, and graduate levels.

Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter. If you take an aggregate of carbon nanotubes and create a macroscopic sheet of them, you can create a thin sheet of them: buckypaper. Each individual nanotube is only between 2 and 4 nanometers across, but each one is incredibly strong and tough.

It's fireproof, extremely thermally conductive, possesses tremendous electromagnetic shielding properties, and could lead to materials science, electronics, military and even biological applications. Graphene, in its ideal configuration, is a defect-free network of carbon atoms bound into a It can be viewed as an infinite array of aromatic molecules.

At last: a hexagonal carbon lattice that's only a single atom thick. That's what a sheet of graphene is, arguably the most revolutionary material to be developed and utilized in the 21st century.

It is the basic structural element of carbon nanotubes themselves, and applications are growing continuously. Currently a multimillion dollar industry, graphene is expected to grow into a multibillion dollar industry in mere decades. The Nobel Prize in Physics went to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for groundbreaking experiments involving graphene, and the commercial applications have only been growing. To date, graphene is the thinnest material known, and the mere six year gap between Geim and Novoselov's work and their Nobel award is one of the shortest in the history of physics.

The K-4 crystal consists exclusively of carbon atoms arranged in a lattice, but with an These inter-atomic properties can lead to drastically different physical, chemical, and material properties even with identical chemical formulas for a variety of structures. The quest to make materials harder, stronger, more scratch-resistant, lighter, tougher, etc. If humanity can push the frontiers of the materials available to us farther than ever before, the applications for what becomes feasible can only expand.

Generations ago, the idea of microelectronics, transistors, or the capacity to manipulate individual atoms was surely exclusive to the realm of science-fiction. Today, they're so common that we take all of them for granted. As we hurtle full-force into the nanotech age, materials such as the ones described here become increasingly more important and ubiquitous to our quality of life. It's a wonderful thing to live in a civilization where diamonds are no longer the hardest known material; the scientific advances we make benefit society as a whole.

As the 21st century unfolds, we'll all get to see what suddenly becomes possible with these new materials. This is a BETA experience.

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