Hello World.
I have been neglecting you, trust that I have not forgotten this project. More math puzzles should be forthcoming. And a major plastics post is in the works, including my confession about something I misled you all on. But for now, I ask you to view the following Image on wikipedia.
It's a nanobud. I know, right? you're thinking this: "I do not know what that is. But look at it! Its a carbon nanotube with a ball sticking out the top! How fuckin' cool is that?! Thats totally cool science."
I wish I could tell you what that nanobud does. I do not know. The wikipedia article touches on "fullerene chemistry" which refers to the molecule family named after Buckminister Fuller. To understand what a Fullerene is, I have to arm you with some knowledge about carbon.
Carbon is the 12th element on the periodic table of the elements. Carbon can bond to other atoms to form molecules like cellulose, which is the "structural component of the primary cell wall in green plants." Notice that the chemical formula for cellulose is C6 H10 05, meaning that for every six carbon atoms there will also be ten hydrogen atoms and five oxygen atoms. Also notice the lower case 'n' subscript, this means that cellulose is a long molecule composed of n-many blocks of C6H10O5 linked together.
Trees stand up because of the rigid structure of long chains of cellulose. When a tree dies and falls down, it dries out, we're all fairly familiar with this process. Cellulose has two hydrogen molecules for each oxygen molecule, so after a long evaporation period, a tree loses ten hydrogen molecules and five oxygen molecules per cellulose monomer, and what is left behind is six carbon atoms in a molecule. If you follow the carbon link above you can see carbons laid out in sheets of hexagons connected to each other. That is graphite. Graphite is what is left behind when a tree is allowed to decompose for a very long time. Fossil fuels, which are carbon and hydrogen chains, are trees and other green plants that have not been decomposing for nearly as long. When graphite sinks below the surface of the earth, and approaches very high temperatures and pressures graphite will rearrange to form diamond. In diamond, each carbon connects to four other carbon atoms in a tetrahedral structure. Tetrahedrons are solid 3-dimensional shapes with four faces all the same, the triangular pyramid is a tetrahedron, so long as no one point is different from the others. In Graphite, by contrast, each carbon connects to three other carbon atoms in a triangular structure. Notice that triangles are 2 dimensional and diamonds three dimensional, and that there are no strong connections between the parallel sheets of graphite in the picture. That is why graphite pencil lead can slide off a pencil tip and onto paper.
The differences between diamond and graphite are allotropic differences. Allotropes are molecules that are composed of the same single species of atom, but have different physical and chemical properties because the atoms are connected to each other in different ways. The carbon atoms in diamond make four bonds to other carbons while the carbon atoms in graphite make only three bonds.
The molecule in the middle of your carbon page above, the buckyball, is another allotrope of carbon. Its atoms are arranged differently, as you can plainly see, and it is very unique because of it's closed ball structure.
The buckyball occurs naturally in soot, though that had very little to do with its discovery in 1985. It was named for Buckminster Fuller because he was the originator of the geodesic dome, the atomic structure that the buckyball molecule is believed to have.
Buckyballs are Fullerenes. Similar to buckyballs are carbon nanotubes, the synthesis of carbon nanotubes is a kind of fullerene chemistry.
To date, fullerene chemistry has been something of a let down. There are some truly promising things about nanotubes and buckyballs, but there have not yet been any consumer products or lifestyle changes because of nanotube technology. When buckyballs were first discovered and studied, scientists thought they could be used as the smallest ball bearings imaginable, and that all machines equipped with buckball bearings would experience enormously tiny friction. They were wrong, buckyballs cannot be used in that way.
One of my favorite chemistry professors had a very funny line about buckyballs: "The only thing that buckballs have been useful for is generating doctoral dissertations."
Stay classy, world.
GNU See above.
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