Imagine if you could turn a material that costs $100 per ton into one that costs thousands of dollars per pound—it's the kind of story attached to the fable of the Philosopher's Stone.

At Rice University, a group of scientists started turning coal, an energy source of little value, into graphene, a raw material with dozens of applications in electronics. Then, the scientists realized they could use any carbon source, which for their experiments included dead cockroaches, coffee grounds, and girl scout cookies.

Graphene comes from a mineral called graphite, a carbon allotype, and one of only two forms of naturally-occurring carbon. It has metal-like properties and is valuable for use as a conductor in aerospace, medicine, and electronics.

The global demand for this material is predicted to top $1 billion at an average price of $67,000 per ton.

Using a technique they created called "flash graphene" the scientists were able to create high-value graphene flakes from a variety of raw materials by hooking them up to a pair of capacitors and electrodes that delivered a 3,000° Kelvin shock.

This, according to experiment lead Dr. James Tour, a professor of materials and nanotechnology at Rice University, passes a current through the trash or coal with enough energy to break every carbon-carbon bond in the substance, before they reorganize themselves as graphene.

"You can put your finger right on the container a few seconds afterwards," Tour said. "And keep in mind this is almost three times hotter than the chemical vapor deposition furnaces we formerly used to make graphene, but in the flash process the heat is concentrated in the carbon material and none in a surrounding reactor."