It's time to sharpen your knowledge of pencil history! (Bet you can't guess what the first erasers were made of.) ...

Plasma irradiation removes graphite from the pencil lead, exposing a thin layer of clay. By controlling the exposure time, the thickness of this layer can be varied to modulate the infrared (IR ...

Pencil Lead Can Be Turned Into Metaphorical "Gold" New discoveries show how graphene flakes can be tuned to exhibit three never-before-seen properties in the material. Dr. Russell Moul.

Pencil lead is not lead. Mostly it's graphite. In 1922, it arrived at the finishing plant as bagged powder. Factory hands mixed it with powdered kaolin and water in an American process ...

The pencil tells the story of its own creation. The wood comes from Oregon, or perhaps California. The lead, which is really graphite, is mined in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).

Often tucked behind an ear or rolling off desks unnoticed, the pencil is one of those rare objects that’s both ordinary and ...

“Is it a lead pencil or a mechanical pencil?” he asked. At least 3,000 tons of worry visibly lifted from the ad man’s forehead. “Is it round or hexagonal?” Swift went on gently.

The graphite found in your favorite pencil could have instead been the diamond your mother always wears. What made the ...

Long-ago Arkansas was a pencil-producing state — not a big manufacturer, but there used to be pencil mills in them there hills. By 1922, though, the industry was down to a nub.