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Monday, January 10, 2011

Buckyballs are Everywhere!

Thanks to Jessica:

Have you heard of a bucky ball? No, it's not for playing sports. But coincidentally, it has the shape of a soccer ball, or in this video football (they're English)! Also called C-60, because it's made of 60 carbon atoms, buckminsterfullerene has interesting optical properties: it's red in a solution! Interestingly, it has been discovered in spectroscopy of stars, so it exists in outer space. And, it gave way to a new chemical symbol, the at sign @. Weird, huh? It's @ because the molecule is hollow and sometimes you can put atoms inside, so now they have a sign where an atom can be caged inside another molecule. Anyway, this is a super intriguing and informative video about the buckyball.

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