Instructions for Buckyball
Zometool Project Series: the world’s most powerful Includes detailed instructions START HERE! (and fun!) modeling system. Kids, educators, and by Dr. Steve Yoshinaga WHAT IS A BUCKYBALL? Nobel-prize winning scientists all love Zometool: • it’s unique, brilliant, beautiful A buckyball is a spheri- made of carbon atoms, and 90 edges, the discovered buckyballs, but his name lives • all kits are compatible— more parts, more power! cal molecule made bonds between the carbons. on: a whole class of molecules related to • guaranteed for life! entirely of carbon buckyballs are now called fullerenes. “The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes atoms — the roundest and (some say) most Fullerenes beautiful of all known BUCKYBALLS! Hailed as a breakthrough, molecules. Scientists believe it may be buckyballs have exciting uses in every- thing from medical research to optics, one of the most useful, too. Slicing 12 “points” truncates the icosahedron metallurgy, electronics and energy. Find out how they stimulate human It’s for kicks A buckyball has much more in common research and imagination: with a soccer ball than just looks. It spins, • Molecule of the Year in 1991! bounces against hard surfaces, and when • Lighter than plastic; stronger than steel! squeezed and released, springs back to its • How will this beautiful molecule original shape. Buckyballs are so strong, change your future? they’ve survived 15,000 mph collisions! After the C601 buckyball was discovered in Have a ball with this Wild Science 1985, scientists found more fullerenes. Discovery! Why bucky? Made entirely of carbon, they form spheres (buckyballs), ellipsoids (C70) or tubes Buckyballs were named (buckytubes, or nanotubes2), and have MADE IN USA US Patents RE after the visionary design from kid-safe materials 33,785; 6,840,699 chemical properties more similar to graphite B2.
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