What is Buckyball?

[Tuesday Afternoon]

and why are we celebrating 25 years of it?

[Ptah]

1. geodesic, man.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. and it rotates, too.

:hi:

[Ptah]

3. Named after Buckminster Fuller

[Tuesday Afternoon]

4. Buckminster Fuller played ball?

There is something patently insane about all the typewriters sleeping
with all the beautiful plumbing in the beautiful office buildings --
and all the people sleeping in the slums.

--- R. Buckminster Fuller

[Ptah]

5. Click yor heels and say, "There's no place like Dome."

Dome sweet dome.

Dome dome on the range,

[Tuesday Afternoon]

6. Fullerene

A fullerene is any molecule composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube. Spherical fullerenes are also called buckyballs, and cylindrical ones are called carbon nanotubes or buckytubes. Fullerenes are similar in structure to graphite, which is composed of stacked graphene sheets of linked hexagonal rings; but they may also contain pentagonal (or sometimes heptagonal) rings.
The first fullerene to be discovered, and the family's namesake, was buckminsterfullerene (C60), prepared in 1985 by Richard Smalley, Robert Curl, James Heath, Sean O'Brien, and Harold Kroto at Rice University. The name was an homage to Richard Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic domes it resembles. Fullerenes have since been found to occur (if rarely) in nature.<1>
The discovery of fullerenes greatly expanded the number of known carbon allotropes, which until recently were limited to graphite, diamond, and amorphous carbon such as soot and charcoal. Buckyballs and buckytubes have been the subject of intense research, both for their unique chemistry and for their technological applications, especially in materials science, electronics, and nanotechnology.



more at link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullerene

[GreenPartyVoter]

14. He had a summer house in my hometown, but I never met him. I did visit the Epcot Dome tho

[KamaAina]

7. What the Yankees used to play when Buck Showalter was manager?

no, actually, it's buckminsterfullerene, an organic molecule that's structured like Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes.

[IcyPeas]

8. because the "google" says we should. you will obey.

[MilesColtrane]

9. I think it somehow involves monkeys...tasty, tasty monkeys.

[SoxFan]

10. +1,000,000

[NV Whino]

11. You, too, can have your own buckyball(s)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVy8xwlzCqQ

I got these the other day, and am having lots of fun.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

13. oh dear --

like I don't already waste time enough as it is. :o

[Odin2005]

12. Little carbon molecules that look like soccer balls.