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A Buckyegg Breaks Pentagon Rules
Roland Piquepaille writes "Chemists from Virginia and California have cooked a soup of fullerenes which produced an improbable buckyegg. The egg-shaped structure of their 'buckyballs' was a complete surprise for the researchers. In fact, they wanted to trap some atoms of terbium in a buckyball "to make compounds that could be both medically useful and well-tolerated in the body." And they obtained a buckyegg which both violates some chemistry laws and the FIFA soccer laws which were used until the last World Cup. Read more for additional references and a picture of this buckyegg carrying metal molecules."
Leads to Rolands blog. He's whoring it again. Don't give him your clickthroughs.
using acronyms doesn't help if you have to explain what it means
Definitely above the average story, but should be within the grasp of many.
I was only confused until I realized that the Pentagon in the heading was the shape, not the structure/organization. Then it all made much, much more sense.
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Direct link to story http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.las so?id=7891
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I recently took college chem, and if I recall correctly, 'Buckyballs' can actually be made into tubes, which have been used in some nanotech applications. Geometrically, if you were to take a soccer ball/buckyball, cut it in half along the seams, and then add in alternating rows of hexagons and pentagons, it forms a tube with hemispherical ends. It's hard to explain, but here's a link: http://www.azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=1295 (sorry, no html).
Considering the shape of these tubes, I wonder why an egg-shaped buckyball is so odd...it seems like a very short (i.e. 1-2 rows between the ends) buckytube would approximate an egg shape fairly well. If it is truly egg-shaped, then it isn't a buckyball at all as it isn't carbon-60, but rather is another form of carbon with an entirely different bonding pattern.
I feel your pain.. This may help: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/5735
Buckyballs are made of pentegon and hexagon formations of carbon atoms (look at a soccer ball. same basic pattern). What's different here is that two of the pentagons are touching, which scientists previously thought could not happen.
I first learned about buckyballs in my college chem classes back in 98 or 99 so I thought this article was actually pretty interesting.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.las so?id=7891
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Improbable "Buckyegg" Hatched
September 28, 2006
graphic: purple and blue balls inside an egg-shaped structure
Buckyegg (Christine Beavers/graphic)
An egg-shaped fullerene, or "buckyball egg" has been made and characterized by chemists at UC Davis, Virginia Tech and Emory and Henry College, Va. The unexpected discovery opens new possibilities for structures for fullerenes, which could have a wide range of uses.
"It was a total surprise," said Christine Beavers, a chemistry graduate student working with Professors Alan Balch and Marilyn Olmstead at UC Davis. Beavers is first author on the paper, published this month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Fullerenes, sometimes called "buckyballs," are usually spherical molecules of carbon, named after the futurist R. Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome. The carbon atoms are arranged in pentagons and hexagons, so their structures can resemble a soccer ball. An important rule -- until now -- is that no two pentagons can touch, but are always surrounded by hexagons.
The "buckyegg" compound was made by collaborating scientists at Virginia Tech, led by Professor Harry Dorn. They heated a mixture of carbon and other ingredients under special conditions to make a mixture of fullerenes, then shipped the products to UC Davis, where Balch's group worked on characterizing their structures.
When Beavers started to map out the structure, she found two pentagons next to each other, making the pointy end of the egg. Initially she thought that the results were a mistake, but she showed the data to Marilyn Olmstead, an expert on X-ray crystallography, and they decided that the results were real. The egg contains a molecule of triterbium nitride inside.
The experiment was actually part of a project to find new, more predictable ways to make fullerenes, Beavers said. The researchers were trying to make fullerenes with atoms of terbium, a metal from the lanthanide series of the periodic table, trapped inside. Metals similar to terbium are used as contrast agents for some medical scanning procedures. By putting these metals inside fullerenes, the researchers hope to make compounds that could be both medically useful and well-tolerated in the body.
The other authors on the research paper are Tianming Zuo and Kim Harich at Virginia Tech and James Duchamp at Emory and Henry College. Funding was provided by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
"pentagon rules" are rules made by the Pentagon and miscapitalized.
"pentagon rule" is a rule about pentagon shapes.
"Editor" is a person who knows the difference.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.