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Article: Profile emerges of well-rounded molecule. (buckminsterfullerene molecule)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- March 30, 1991
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1991 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Profile emerges of well-rounded molecule
Buckyballs are really on a roll. Just six months after the publication of a remarkably simple recipe for making copious quantities of these unique, symmetric molecules, researchers have accumulated sufficient data to fill in important details of the substance's intriguing chemical and physical behavior.
As originally envisioned by its discoverers, a buckyball, or buckminster-fullerene molecule, consists of 60 carbon atoms arranged so that the atoms sit at the vertices of a polyhedron that matches the geometric pattern on a soccer ball (SN: 12/8/90, p.357). The new results confirm the predicted structure to a ...