Chemistry Nexus
by WebElements: the periodic table on the web
Bucky Balls codiscoveror Richard Smalley dies
Nobel laureate Richard Smalley, the Rice University professor who helped discover buckyballs (buckminsterfullerene, C60, the football (soccer) ball shaped form of carbon, died at the age of 62.
Richard Smalley shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Sir Harold Kroto (Sussex) and Robert Curl (also Rice) for the identification of the new form of carbon known as buckminsterfullerene because of its similarity to Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes.
WebElements October 28th, 2005
Posted In: Chemistry, Nanoscience and nanotechnology
Tags: buckyballs, fullerenes
Buckyballs clue to mass extinction 250 million years ago
Earth’s most severe mass extinction from 250 million years ago that wiped out 90 percent of all marine species and 70 percent of land vertebrates – was triggered by a collision with a comet or asteroid, according to a team led by The University of Washington, Seattle, USA. Evidence is based upon elegant findings involving carbon molecules called buckminsterfullerenes (C60, Buckyballs) with the gases helium and argon trapped inside their cage structures.
WebElements February 22nd, 2002
Posted In: Chemistry
Tags: fullerenes