What is buckminsterfullerene? (and where on earth did it get such a strange name?)

Figure 1 - Soccer Ball

     In 1985 scientists discovered that carbon (C60) had a new existing form. If you look at a soccer ball (see figure 1), it is composed of two shapes; hexagons and pentagons. This is similar to the structure of buckminsterfullerene. Sixty carbon atoms make up this spherical shape with a carbon

Figure 2 - Buckminsterfullerene

atom at each corner of 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons. Each carbon atom makes four bonds - fulfilling the traditional carbon valence of four - as seen by the highlighted blue pentagon in figure 2. The thicker lines are the single bonds, while the skinnier ones would be the double bonds. In terms of size comparison between the ordinary soccer ball in figure 1 and the buckminsterfullerene atom in figure 2, it is the same size comparison as earth would be to an ordinary soccer ball (France, 2014).

     To answer why it has such a long and unusual name there are two reasons, first, it is named after Richard Buckminster Fuller, an American architect who simplified the geodesic dome which links to the shape of buckyballs. And second, a 'fullerene' is just the name given to a molecule of carbon in either a hollow sphere, tube or many other different shapes.

     Interestingly enough, since C60 was discovered there has since been many more carbon molecules made, there is now also C70, C76 and C84 (France, 2014).