# It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Cling Film

I'm currently doing some work on a presentation about graphene, and have come across numerous articles which claim something along the lines of

It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap / Cling Film.

My question is, is there any proof / calculations to back up this claim? Every article I come across seems to be very similar and I cannot find the original source which might contain proof, or a link the relevant paper/study

Sources

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So when Young's modulus of monolayer graphene is around $10^{12} \;\textrm{Pa}$, a back of the napkin estimate suggests that over a surface of $1 \;\textrm{mm}$ graphene can easily withstand $10^6 \;\textrm{N}$, which looks like a nice guess for an elephant several elephants to me :)
$10^6~\text{N}$? Isn't that more like a whole herd? –  Transmission from Apr 10 at 16:59
Well, can we agree on somewhere around $\mathcal{O}(10)$? –  Wojciech Morawiec Apr 10 at 17:02