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A Buckyegg Breaks Pentagon Rules

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the gotta-break-some-eggs-to-well-you-know dept.

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."

2 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. I feel so dump by pembo13 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What field of science do I have study for how long to understand that summary?

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    "Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
  2. My understanding... by Toba82 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    IANAOC (I am not an organic chemist), but the way I see it, previous buckyball compounds needed to have the soccer ball shape because of the number of free electrons in the molecular bond didn't allow the adjacent pentagon structure to exist. Is it possible that the shell may not have a neutral charge? The molecule within could compensate and that might allow this 'impossible' set of bonds to work.

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    I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.