Dry ice isn't just great for keeping steaks cold and filling your bathtub with fog, it may also play a major role in producing the miracle metal graphene. Researchers at Northern Illinois University have discovered that burning magnesium in frozen carbon dioxide produces a thin layer of the hyped-to-the-lattices carbon nanostructure. The so-called dry-ice method has several advantages over previous techniques, not the least of which is the ability to pump out the relative of pencil lead on a much larger scale. It also happens to be faster, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly compared with the lengthy processes i
