I hope she smiles a bit more than she did when I stood just a few inches from her. She was fumbling for the cord (which had slipped behind the curtgain) to pull to show a plaque and she couldn't find the end, on which was a clothes peg so that she could locate it easily. I hissed, "it's on a clothes peg Your Majesty", she didn't even smile!!!! Bless
Nope, graphite's one of the four known allotropes of carbon, along with diamond, amorphous (coal and soot) and Fullerenes ("bucky balls" and carbon nanotubes, now the darlings of the nanotechnology crowd). Interestingly (perhaps) graphite was first discovered in Cumbria, where people used it to mark sheep, thereby suggesting its use as a writing tool.
Mark Lipton Chemistry Pedant
I'm amused by the Chemistry pedant!! My husband is a biological pedant and he has just tut tutted me for asking a silly question, he said "duh!! everyone knows it is carbon". Well not silly me!!
I'm sure I played golf years ago with a graphite driver??? Or is this yet another senior moment?
Judith
The lead issue in pencils came from the paint on the pencils not the point. Kids would chew on the pencils and absorb lead from the paint.
The teacher was just plain ignorant and that's an after the fact rationalization :-) Believe it or not, my mother used it when I told her the teacher's opinion!
Of course, you are right and that's why when our children were small, they had guards on the cots to stop them gnawing the paint off the rails.
Judith
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