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Race to Catch a Buckyball
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Viewing Ideas
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Before Watching
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Before watching, you may want to review or introduce some basic
chemistry terms, such as element, compound, and chemical bond.
If you have a periodic table of elements available, use it as a
visual aid. Locate carbon on the table and explain to students
that carbon is an element, but it is found most often as a
component in many common compounds. Some students may be able to
list some compounds in which carbon is a component, such as CO2
(carbon dioxide) and CO (carbon monoxide).
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A main challenge faced by the scientists in this program is to
determine the structure of a particular type of carbon molecule.
To prepare the students for this aspect of the program, try some
simple tessellation activities. Tessellations are shapes that,
when fitted together, cover a flat surface with no gaps. Squares
and rectangles are particularly easy to tessellate:
Tessellations can be found in the pattern of tiles that cover
bathroom walls and the brickwork patterns in building walls and
pathways. Have the students sketch other shapes that might
tessellate easily. (Triangles will tessellate, but pentagons
will not.)
After Watching
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Soon after discovering that they had created a new form of
carbon, scientists began trying to create a molecular model.
When they created the "Buckyball," the scientists had still not
been able to isolate a pure sample or see a single molecule of
Carbon 60. Ask the students to reflect on this process of
developing and testing a theory. What information did scientists
have that helped them create their model? How did they evaluate
and revise their ideas? What evidence did they find to help
confirm their theories?
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In building simple models of molecules, the corners, or
vertices, represent the outermost atoms in the molecule. In
constructing a molecular model, each vertex represents an atom.
A Buckyball has 60 vertices, 60 carbon atoms, and no interior
atoms. That is why a Buckyball is called C60. Three-dimensional
shapes that consist of several copies of the same shape, such as
cubes, are called regular polyhedra. Have the students examine a
soccer ball. A soccer ball is not a regular polyhedron because
it contains both hexagons and pentagons. It has the same
structure as a Buckyball.
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