GeometryCode bulletin for March 2015

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Buckyball turns 30

In 1985, a new form of carbon molecule was discovered with 60 carbon atoms (C60) which was named the “Buckyball” in honor of Buckminster Fuller’s nickname “Bucky” and the general class of materials were christened as “Fullerenes.” If you’ve ever examined the geometry of a geodesic dome, the familiar pattern of triangle-subdivided hexagons and pentagons will intuitively remind you that this shape is a close approximation of a sphere using linear elements. This quasi-rounded shape’s closeness to a sphere, combined with Fuller’s ‘tensegrity‘ – the robustness of using only triangular elements – contributes to it’s outstanding strength for a given amount of structural material; I decided to build a geodesic dome home in 1978 after seeing a Cathedralite Dome (the only vendor at the time that paid royalties to Bucky Fuller) that had a massive oak tree crash onto it… Only a few asphalt shingles needed to be replaced; any other structure would have likely been demolished by the tonnage of the oak’s limbs. Another property owing to the spherical mimicry is the close-to-maximal amount of enclosed volume for a given amount of structural material; a very efficient shape indeed!

Here’s more about these interesting geometric nano-materials that assume the familiar Archimedean Solid (polyhedron) shape of Truncated Icosahedron; most folks think of the soccer ball shape and a quote from the related Wikipedia article on them:

“The discovery of fullerenes greatly expanded the number of known carbon allotropes, which until recently were limited to graphite, diamond, and amorphous carbon such as soot and charcoal. Buckyballs and buckytubes have been the subject of intense research, both for their unique chemistry and for their technological applications, especially in materials science, electronics, and nanotechnology.”

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