Bucky Ball is a member of a class of carbon structures known as Fuller’s. The Fuller is an allotrope (solid structure) of the element carbon – the most well known are diamond and graphite. The Fuller may be hollow spheres which Bucky ball, ellipsoid, or tube (buckytubes). The Fuller is similar in structure graphite, which consists of a sheet of linked hexagonal rings, but they contain pentagonal (or sometimes heptagonal) rings that prevent sheets from being flat.
Bucky Ball 25 year anniversary celebration in Google Doodle – Google celebrates 25 years in the Bucky ball today, 4 September 2010. When you visit Google, you can see that the second “O” in the word “Google” is actually a Bucky ball that you can spin and twist it with your mouse.
The Buckminsterfullerene molecule was first discovered 25 years ago by a group of researchers at Rice University in Texas, and is named after architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, known for the proliferation of Geodesic dome. A fullerine is any molecule composed entirely of carbon
The unusual spherical arrangement of the molecule led to the nickname “Bucky Ball”, the researchers have since gone on to find buckytubes, nanotubes, and nano megatubes “onion”.
The unique chemistry of the family of particles has often been studied for use in electronics, nanotechnology and many other disciplines.
