July 2, 2008

How Many People Does It Take To Make A Buckyball?

Posted by Carmen Drahl on July 2, 2008 in Chemistry is Everywhere

Although early reports would have you believe the answer is five (Nature 1985, 318, 162)*, these videos could muddy the waters somewhat.

They appear (along with several other videos) on a website from New York City’s Whitney Museum, which just this weekend opened a new exhibit on R. Buckminster Fuller, the geometric visionary/architect who is C₆₀’s namesake.

Watch closely: Is the video of museum employees putting together a geodesic dome a stop-motion video (like claymation) or is it merely sped up? Also, that origami buckyball looks mind-bogglingly hard to fold. (It took me days to master paper-crane folding in second grade.) If there are any detailed instructions for how to fold it, though, we’d love to hear about it!

*What I love most about this classic paper is the elegant simplicity of Figure 1.

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