I'm wearing my "soccer ball" tie today for a rather esoteric scientific anniversary. Yesterday (4 September) marks the date in 1985 for the isolation and identification of buckminsterfullerene, a very interesting carbon molecule. It consists of sixty carbon atoms, bonded in a structure resembling a soccer ball! The bonding lines follow the pattern of conjoined pentagons and hexagons. These "cage" molecules actually occur regularly in soot, along with many other carbon-only compounds. The common name for C-60 - buckminsterfullerene - was chosen because of the structural similarity with architectural geodesic domes created by Buckminster Fuller. The whole group of cage fullerenes is sometimes called "buckyballs."
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