Toying with putty leads to physics breakthrough for Irish physicist

An Irish physicist has made a major discovery using children’s Silly Putty.

Professor Jonathan Coleman, who works in Trinity College Dublin’s School of Physics, is an investigator in a research centre called AMBER (Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research).

Prof Coleman, along with postdoctoral researcher Conor Boland, added a special material, known as graphene, to Silly Putty (polysilicone) — and the two substances combined to give a quirky result.