|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Soccer-Ball Carbon
| Article
# : |
10127 |
|
|
Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
|
| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1993 |
2,433 Words |
| Author
: |
Angelo DePalma
Angelo DePalma, a free-lance writer specializing in science
and technology, resides in Newton, New Jersey. |
The discovery and identification new pictures from of carbon opens a window onto an uncharted world of materials with potential applications ranging from drug delivery to optics, superconductors, metals, and plastics.
Just as artist paints new pictures from the colors on their palettes, materials scientists seek to create new materials by forming new combinations of naturally existing elements. Trying to find a new element would be somewhat like trying to find a new primary color besides red, blue, or yellow.
Scientist don't expect to find a new element or molecular pattern that has never been seen before. Yet in 1985 two chemists, Harry Kroto of the University of Sussex and Richard Smalley of Rice University in Houston, made just such a discovery.
While visiting Smalley's lab, Kroto persuaded Smalley's research group to put carbon into Smalley's new device for exposing, materials laser beam. Although soot, composed of variable-sized clusters of carbon atoms, would have been the normally expected product, the researchers discovered an unexpected concentration of clusters that seemed to be quite stable. The material was certainly all carbon, but it behaved like neither graphite nor diamond, the only all-carbon materials then known.
Furthermore, it was huge, with a molecular weight (720) that required 60 carbon atoms (12 * 60 = 720). The researchers were then challenged to imagine how 60 atoms could form a stable unit, since the only proven models of stable multicarbon units were chains of carbon atoms and 5-or 6-atom rings of carbon atoms. Yet neither rings nor chains could be stable with so many atoms.
After considerable thought, and discussions with students and colleagues, Smalley imagined that perhaps the mysterious cluster was actually a 60-carbon molecule forming a hollow sphere. His efforts to model a 60-atom hollow sphere finally produced a stable configuration formed by combining 5-atom and 6-atom rings. Upon checking with a colleague in math, Smalley learned that he had "discovered" the basic soccer-ball shape.
The shape was also identical to that of the geodesic dome popularized by inventor R. Buck Minister Fuller during the 1950s. Smalley and Kroto published their hypothesized structure for C60 in 1985 and could not resist naming their discovery buckminsterfullerene, which has since been shortened to fullerene, or "buckyball"
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
