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Football and Carbon Molecules
Instructions:
1. Can
you make a big sphere from regular pentagons and regular
hexagons?
Do you know?
The pattern on a football is
formed by 12 regular pentagons and 20 regular hexagons.
They all have equal edges and each vertex is shared by
exactly three edges. Curiously, in addition to graphite
and diamiond, the existence of a new kind of elemental
carbon in the form of football shaped molecules was predicted
as early as the 1960s, but was not confirmed until 1985.
The discovery of fullerenes, which this family of carbon
molecules came to be called, not only spawns an entire
new branch of chemistry, but also has repercussions in
diverse research areas.
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