Students from The Macclesfield Academy and Tytherington School have experience of drawing with a pencil but they might not have known that their pencil graphite could produce graphene.

The Rotary club of Macclesfield Castle arranged for the students to visit the University of Manchester to join 300 other students for a lecture by Dr Aravind Vijayaraghavan, a member of the Graphene team and team leader of the nano functional materials group at the University. The world's first 2D material was isolated in 2004 by Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov at the University of Manchester, resulting in the two being awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010.

The Macclesfield students learnt about Graphene: what it is, how it can be made, and, its many uses.
Some of the comments from the students speak for themselves: *it was made with graphite and sticky tape! *the world’s thinnest material and one of the strongest *it could be used to deliver drugs to target cancer cells *really exciting to be at the University where Graphene was developed *I’d like to do nano-research

The Headteacher of Tytherington School, Mr E Botwe thanked Rotary for giving their students ‘this exciting opportunity’. Mr R Hedge, Headteacher of The Macclesfield Academy thanked Rotary and said that the students ‘were now enthusiastic supporters of nano technology’.