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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."

14 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Wha? by Lord_Dweomer · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Most confusing /. story blurb evar.

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    1. Re:Wha? by b0r1s · · Score: 5, Informative

      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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    2. Re:Wha? by dgatwood · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Indeed, neat story, terrible Slashdot writeup. If they had said: A Buckyegg Breaks the "Adjacent Pentagon Rule", it would have been much less confusing.

      And I couldn't figure out what the heck world cup soccer had to do with buckyballs until I read the fine article, either.

      Sometimes, I think the editors post these things just to make people so thoroughly confused that they'll click the article. Makes me wonder if they get a kickback from ads on the article page or something. :-D

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  2. Do not click that link at the end! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Leads to Rolands blog. He's whoring it again. Don't give him your clickthroughs.

  3. SimCity 2000 by thisnow1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've been replaying SimCity 2000 lately and that reads like one of the crazy ad-libbed thrown together random newspaper articles, but not quite as coherent.

  4. 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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  5. Nice... by MustardMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Way to throw out a completely misleading headline there, Roland. "Pentagon Rules" makes it sound like some sort of government security issue. Add that to the barely intelligible article summary and we've got another bang-up article by the Pipsqueak blogger. At least he's back to linking his own shitty blog articles again, so we're further justified calling him out for his blatant slashvertisments. Zonk, either stop approving this shit, or give us a separate category for articles from Roland so we can remove them from our fucking front pages. Forget the stupid ajaxified comment system, I want to be able to filter articles based on submittor.

  6. Am I the only who chuckled... by NeutronCowboy · · Score: 4, Funny

    .... when coming across the name of the scientist - Mrs Beavers? The jokes are endless. :)

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  7. 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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    1. Re:My understanding... by IainMH · · Score: 4, Funny

      Just because you don't understand it, it doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

  8. If you add another terbium atom by thewils · · Score: 4, Funny

    You could give it to the Kiwis to play with ;)

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  9. Finally! by ZSpade · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now that the drive is well underway, how long till they finish the Heart of Gold?

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  10. Can't wait for the bucky chicken! by Deflatamouse! · · Score: 4, Funny

    But this time we know the egg definitely came first!

  11. Direct link to story by Yetihehe · · Score: 5, Informative

    Direct link to story http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.las so?id=7891

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