Buckminsterfullerene C60 Molecule
Fullerene are a family of carbon allotropes, molecules composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, tube, or plane. Spherical fullerenes are also called buckyballs, and cylindrical ones are called carbon nanotubes or buckytubes. Graphene is an example of a planar fullerene sheet. Fullerenes are similar in structure to graphite, which is composed of stacked sheets of linked hexagonal rings, but may also contain pentagonal (or sometimes heptagonal) rings that would prevent a sheet from being planar. The fullerene was discovered in 1985 by Robert Curl, Harold Kroto and Richard Smalley at the University of Sussex and Rice University, who named it after Richard Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic domes it resembles.
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Photo credit: © Phil Degginger / Alamy / Afripics
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Keywords: ball, buckminster, buckminsterfullerene, c60, ellipsoid, fuller, geodesic, icosahedron, molecule, soccer, truncated, tube
