Buckyball 25th anniversary marked with Google doodle - 10 things you need to know about buckyballs - mirror.co.uk
Buckyball 25th anniversary marked with Google doodle - 10 things you need to know about buckyballs
By Mirror.co.uk 4/09/2010
Today is the 25th anniversary of the discovery of the buckyball - a spherical fullerene, or molecule made up entirely of carbon atoms. Google are celebrating this event by replacing the second 'O' in their logo with an interactively rotatable fullerene C60.
That's the science bit. And here are the top then things you need to know about everybody's favourite chemical compound that resembles a geodesic dome.
1) We're not on entirely familiar terms, so let's address the buckyball with the formality such a big occasion deserves: as the first fullerene to be discovered, it is formally known as Buckminsterfullerene (C60).
2) The name is an homage to Richard Buckminster Fuller, an architect whose geodesic domes (similar to the Walt Disney resort's Epcot theme park 'golf ball') it looks like.
3) It was first prepared in 1985 by Harold Kroto, James Heath, Sean O'Brien, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Kroto, Curl and Smalley were awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their roles in the discovery of the buckyball.
4) Containing 60 carbon atoms arranged to form a hollow sphere (a truncated (T = 3) icosahedron), the buckyball's structuer is often compared to a football.
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