I agree it's not a particularly good response, but I can imagine a teacher reasoning that:
1. A minority of students want to stump the teacher [1] - maybe out of interest, maybe to show how clever they are, maybe for sport.
2. Schools cover a very broad range of topics, and it isn't humanly possible for every science teacher to have an in-depth knowledge of every single question.
3. The teacher fears, if they answer a question with "I don't know" it will reveal they haven't used their knowledge of graphene in their day-to-day life, and some students will take that as a proof the subject is 'useless' and a 'waste of time' as even the most scientifically inclined person they know hasn't used it.
Obviously, (3) is a mistake on the teacher's part - it's quite possible to have a subject be important without you knowing every detail of it - but I can imagine how any inexperienced teacher might end up thinking it.
Also, intuitively when you pull two bits of tape apart both bend, and when you bend a pencil lead it snaps. And if you stick tape to a painted wall and pull it off, you'll pull off jagged flakes of paint rather than halving the thickness of the paint. So if someone gave me 20 seconds to answer whether it would work I would say probably not.
I agree it's not a particularly good response, but I can imagine a teacher reasoning that:
1. A minority of students want to stump the teacher [1] - maybe out of interest, maybe to show how clever they are, maybe for sport.
2. Schools cover a very broad range of topics, and it isn't humanly possible for every science teacher to have an in-depth knowledge of every single question.
3. The teacher fears, if they answer a question with "I don't know" it will reveal they haven't used their knowledge of graphene in their day-to-day life, and some students will take that as a proof the subject is 'useless' and a 'waste of time' as even the most scientifically inclined person they know hasn't used it.
Obviously, (3) is a mistake on the teacher's part - it's quite possible to have a subject be important without you knowing every detail of it - but I can imagine how any inexperienced teacher might end up thinking it.
Also, intuitively when you pull two bits of tape apart both bend, and when you bend a pencil lead it snaps. And if you stick tape to a painted wall and pull it off, you'll pull off jagged flakes of paint rather than halving the thickness of the paint. So if someone gave me 20 seconds to answer whether it would work I would say probably not.
[1] https://xkcd.com/1145/