https://briankoberlein.com/2015/07/17/spaceballs/ Brian Koberlein Tue, 19 Feb 2019 19:13:36 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.3 https://briankoberlein.com/2015/07/17/spaceballs/#comment-2575 Sat, 18 Jul 2015 20:02:03 +0000 https://briankoberlein.com/?p=4990#comment-2575 My favorite fullerene is Carbon70. Carbon60 is the most common, and is a truncated icosahedron (soccer ball). When fulleres were first discovered, I noticed the large spike of C60 on the screen of the mass spectrometer. I also noticed a smaller but significant spike for C70. I wondered about this for years, but failed to imagine it’s geometry.
Perhaps a decade later, I heard that Dr. Richard Smally, (Nobel Laureate in Chemistry for his discovery of fullerene) was lecturing at Brookhaven National Laboratories.
I drove 5 hours in a raging storm to attend his lecture, and after, I had the honor & privilege of speaking with him. During our conversation, I asked him about my fascination with C70 and he described it for me. I was delighted. I drove 5 hours back home, but the experience was worth it. Sadly, he died a few years later.

]]>