The same material that insulates so well in one dimension
(especially discontinuous origami), is the best
available thermal conductor in the other two dimensions[21]. The slick, non-stick surface
of curved kish will be useful in frying pans. The traditional Chinese
wok will be the easiest cooking
implement to manufacture in oriented graphitic form:
Let's not forget the electrical anisotropy of graphite[22].
While we could use a compact flame on the bottom surface of this wok to
produce a fairly uniform temperature across the top surface, ohmic heating
will produce even better results. If we apply biased electrodes to top
and bottom surfaces of the wok, we can expect the top and bottom surfaces to
be approximately equipotential and current through the wok to be more uniform
than the heat we could introduce with a flame.
The current procedure for curved kish
synthesis exploits surface tension to make curved melt surfaces that serve as
templates for curved kish shells. This procedure, slightly modified, can
produce objects like a miniature "chalice". To
make larger objects, like a useful wok, we can borrow a
trick used by
modern telescope makers. Liquid in a dish spinning at constant speed has
a paraboloidal top surface, which is ideal for telescope mirrors, if the liquid happens
to be
mercury or
molten glass, and about the right shape for a wok. If
we spin a dish of carbon-saturated molten iron, the paraboloidal top surface
can serve as a template for the precipitation of a graphite crystal bent to
form a good wok.