Buckyballs

Vicki Guan
Jacob Altamirano
Period 6, Science
April 6, 2009
Buckyballs C60
Buckministerfullerenes
The Most Beautiful Molecule
1. A buckyball is an extremely stable, ball-shaped carbon molecule whose structure looks like a dome.
2. Allotropes are different physical forms of the same element; examples of carbon allotropes are fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, graphite and diamond.
3. Buckyballs are named after Buckminister Fuller, and architect whose structures looked like buckyballs.
4.Buckyballs have been modified into superconductors that can carry electricity with virtually no resistance at temperatures higher than even many of the so-called “high-temperature superconductors.”
5. Buckyballs trapped in a membrane release oxygen molecules to kill cancer cells.
6. Buckyballs can be modified with copper to create a room temperature device that can store and manipulate information at a single molecule level.
7. Harold Kroto, Robert Curl , and Richard Smalley discovered buckyballs.
8. The scientists mentioned above won the Nobel prize in chemistry for their discovery.