nobel prize 2010

Two scientists at Manchester University have won the 2010 Nobel prize for physics for creating the thinnest possible flakes of carbon.
The news that Andre Geim, 51, and Konstatin Novoselov, 36, had received the 10m Swedish-kronor (£1m) prize was announced today by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Novoselov is the youngest Nobel laureate since 1973.
Geim and Novoselov were both born in Russia and collaborated as PhD supervisor and student in the Netherlands before moving to Manchester University, one of Britain's top physics institutes.
The scientists' breakthrough came from a deceptively simple experiment in 2004 that involved a block of carbon and some Scotch tape. The two used the tape to strip off layers of carbon that were only one atom thick. These thin wafers of carbon, known as graphene, were found to have extraordinary properties. nobel prize 2010