A much too modest proposal
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A much too modest proposal
M
y wife Connie had the great misfortune of dating me while I was a graduate student in materials science in my mid30s. Having entered the field with a chemistry background, I was just discovering the joys of phase diagrams at about the time our relationship began looking as if it would be stable, in stark contrast to all the metastable, outright unstable, or downright immiscible relationships that had littered my past. Any male carbon-based life form in this position knows that the female carbon-based life form he has fallen in love with requires the presentation of a carbon trinket with the appropriate cut, color, clarity, and carats as part of the deal to guarantee continued phase stability. (One wonders whether, if there is silicon-based life somewhere in the universe, as has been suggested, the same relationship obtains; that is, does the female silicon-based life form require the presentation of a sample of silicon—say, in the form of a computer chip—as a precursor to marriage? If so, would a CPU be more coveted than a memory chip?) Trying to avoid the whole scenario entirely, I initially offered Connie what I thought was an excellent compromise: instead of a diamond the size of a pea—and a baby pea at that—I generously suggested that I buy her a cubic zirconia crystal bigger than her head. This, I thought, would allow her to triumph over her friends, as she waved the roughly-bowling-ball-sized shiny object in their faces, putting to shame the comparatively nanosized diamonds they sported on their fingers. This suggestion was greeted with some unrepeatable verbiage from my beloved, whose general gist can be summarized for this publication as “no.” The budding materials scientist in me naturally turned to the carbon phase diagram for guidance. A few minutes of study gave me the ammunition I was looking for: at room temperature and pressure, the stable form of carbon is graphite! Diamonds are metastable under these conditions, and entropic thermodynamic forces would be trying with all their might to turn diamonds into graphite, though kinetics suggests that the process might take millions of years. Kinetics be damned, I thought! Our love was true enough to last an eternity, and I would not spend that interval anxiously awaiting the slow phase changes of a diamond engagement ring into graphite under the unyielding forces of entropy. Surely anyone would agree that it was best to go with phase stability from the start. Thus the idea for a graphite engagement ring was born. But after the cubic zirconia debacle, how to sell the idea to Connie in a manner that would yield a positive response? After some thought, it occurred to me that a two-pronged approach was best.
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MRS BULLETIN
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VOLUME 37 • MAY 2012
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www.mrs.org/bulletin
Thus it was that, waiting for the appropriate mood and moment, I broached the subject again with my (I hoped) wife-to-be. Imagine this, I said: As the sun slowly sets over the ocean, I kneel down on one knee in the sand and, with loving heart and hands, pre
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