The Story of the Buckyball

Our story starts off with stars in space

The Sun is a Star – Our Star

Our Earth goes round the Sun

One day many millions of years into the future

the Sun will blow up

aaaaghhh!!!

Ouch! it’s

HOT

There are lots and lots and lots of stars like our Sun in space

In fact there are about ten thousand million stars in Space

We can write this in numbers as

1 followed by 22 noughts (or zeros)

We can write as 10 22

is a very

BIG number

………, There are 10 dots here

………, ………, ………, ………, ………, 100

………, ………, ………, ………, ………, 1000

This is only 1000 so…

10 22

is really

really

BIG

Now lets think about something that is very Very small a molecule

We are all made out of very tiny molecules

Molecules are bundles of very tiny atoms Carbon atomsC Nitrogen atomsN Oxygen atomsO Hydrogen atomsH …mainly

The water molecule, H 2 O, has two Hydrogen atoms and one Oxygen atom O H

and it is very small

In a glass of water there are about a million million million million water molecules

=10 24

Where did our atoms come from?

All your atoms were made a very long time ago inside a star a bit like our Sun

That star exploded millions of years ago

and blew your atoms into space

They floated around in space for millions of years

and ended up here TODAY

So you should be very

happy

So we all came from outer space We are all aliens

We tried to create a bit of a very very hot star in our laboratory

With a magnifying glass and Sunlight you can burn a hole in a piece of wood Sun’s Rays lens

We used a laser instead of the Sun and Graphite like the lead in a pencil laser graphite

clusters of 60 atoms formed

We decided that the 60 carbon atoms were stuck together to form a cage with the same pattern as a soccer ball

o

o

o

C 60 : Buckminsterfullerene

The Earth is 100,000,000 times larger than a soccerball and a soccerball is 100,000,000 x larger than a Buckyball 10 7 m m m 10 8

o

12 Pentagons on a Soccer Ball 12 x 5 = 60 corners

An Australian Fly

Algebra

Euler’s Law Faces + Corners – Edges = 2

The Cube

Cube Faces Edges Corners

+ _

+ _

A Pyramid

F =

C =

E =

Now you are going to make a model of C 60 the Buckyball

School Arts/Science project