A Buckyegg Breaks Pentagon Rules

Roland Piquepaille writes "Chemists from Virginia and California have cooked a soup of fullerenes which produced an improbable buckyegg. The egg-shaped structure of their 'buckyballs' was a complete surprise for the researchers. In fact, they wanted to trap some atoms of terbium in a buckyball "to make compounds that could be both medically useful and well-tolerated in the body." And they obtained a buckyegg which both violates some chemistry laws and the FIFA soccer laws which were used until the last World Cup. Read more for additional references and a picture of this buckyegg carrying metal molecules."

Wha?

[Lord_Dweomer (648696)]

Most confusing /. story blurb evar.

Re:

[Jeff DeMaagd (2015)]

Most confusing /. story blurb evar.

I'm sure that's not an easy thing to do given Slashdot's high standards. Usually, the confusion is often just bafflement over why it was posted in the first place.

Also, I've ignored Roland so long that I didn't realize he's posting for ZDNet now. I lost hope for Slashdot's editorial staff, I guess I really can't count on ZD to keep the riffraff editors away from them either.

Re:Wha?

[b0r1s (170449)]

Definitely above the average story, but should be within the grasp of many.

I was only confused until I realized that the Pentagon in the heading was the shape, not the structure/organization. Then it all made much, much more sense.

Re:Wha?

[dgatwood (11270)]

Indeed, neat story, terrible Slashdot writeup. If they had said: A Buckyegg Breaks the "Adjacent Pentagon Rule", it would have been much less confusing.

And I couldn't figure out what the heck world cup soccer had to do with buckyballs until I read the fine article, either.

Sometimes, I think the editors post these things just to make people so thoroughly confused that they'll click the article. Makes me wonder if they get a kickback from ads on the article page or something. :-D

Re:

[b0r1s (170449)]

No, it seems much more likely that the editor didn't fully understand it, so they didn't try to edit the incredibly confusing intro text.

Re:Wha?

[smitty_one_each (243267)]

OMG, what a nightmarish thought! A second Potomac Puzzle Palace, adjacent the first?
That much bureaucratic inertia could slow Earth's rotation and really tear up the weather.

Re:

[TeknoHog (164938)]

I was only confused until I realized that the Pentagon in the heading was the shape, not the structure/organization. Then it all made much, much more sense.

Me too. Isn't It Great How Headings Are Capitalized in the English Language?-)

Re:

[TeknoHog (164938)]

Well, Wikipedia suggests that it's more common in the US than in Britain [wikipedia.org], but there doesn't seem to be a sharp distinction.

Re:

[Mr. Underbridge (666784)]

No, it's about on par for pisspaille.

Do not click that link at the end!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Leads to Rolands blog. He's whoring it again. Don't give him your clickthroughs.

Re:

[goaty_the_flying_sho (861224)]

Weird, timothy didn't post the story for him this time.

Re:

[Duncan3 (10537)]

To be fair, all /. links require bouncing through the sponsor's blog posting first.

Sometimes two or even three of them.

The days of linking directly to the actual source article are gone.

SimCity 2000

[thisnow1 (882441)]

I've been replaying SimCity 2000 lately and that reads like one of the crazy ad-libbed thrown together random newspaper articles, but not quite as coherent.

Re:

[FuturePastNow (836765)]

Capitalist Running Dog Lackeys Create Buckyegg?

Re:

[Reaperducer (871695)]

"Naysayers Say Nay"

I feel so dump

[pembo13 (770295)]

What field of science do I have study for how long to understand that summary?

Re:

[Aceticon (140883)]

No, no, no - you're going at it all wrong.

All you have to do is balance the positive and negative energies in yourself so that you stop felling the need to understand the summary.

Re:

[Kawahee (901497)]

Way to fuck up the grammar stakes, buddy.

Re:

[unitron (5733)]

"To(sic) dumb to spell properly too it seems."

What does being mute have to do with the ability to spell?

Re:

[Nutria (679911)]

You might have started by paying attention in your chemistry classes at secondary school.

Unless you graduated University before Fullerenes were discovered.

Jackass.

Nice...

[MustardMan (52102)]

Way to throw out a completely misleading headline there, Roland. "Pentagon Rules" makes it sound like some sort of government security issue. Add that to the barely intelligible article summary and we've got another bang-up article by the Pipsqueak blogger. At least he's back to linking his own shitty blog articles again, so we're further justified calling him out for his blatant slashvertisments. Zonk, either stop approving this shit, or give us a separate category for articles from Roland so we can remove them from our fucking front pages. Forget the stupid ajaxified comment system, I want to be able to filter articles based on submittor.

Re:

[fozzy1015 (264592)]

Fullerenes, sometimes called "buckyballs," are usually spherical molecules of carbon, named after the futurist R. Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome. The carbon atoms are arranged in pentagons and hexagons, so their structures can resemble a soccer ball. An important rule -- until now -- is that no two pentagons can touch, but are always surrounded by hexagons.

More interested about their experiements to put certain metals in buckyeyes for medical scanning. So is the idea of putting radioacti

Lame even for Roland the Plogger

[Animats (122034)]

Even for Roland the Plogger, this is lame. Does he pay Slashdot to let him through, or what?

Re:

[Hockney Twang (769594)]

I have a present for you, I've written a greasemonkey [mozdev.org] script that removes Roland Piquepaille articles from Slashdot. It could probably be used as an Opera userscript, as well, if you don't use Firefox. The first block of code removes section styles, so you don't have to deal with those awful color schemes. But you can just clip that part out if it's not your style.

// ==UserScript==
// @name Slashdot Script
// @namespace None
// @description None
// @include http://.slashdot.org/*
// @include http:/

Am I the only who chuckled...

[NeutronCowboy (896098)]

.... when coming across the name of the scientist - Mrs Beavers? The jokes are endless. :)

Re:

[Midnight Thunder (17205)]

.... when coming across the name of the scientist - Mrs Beavers? The jokes are endless. :)

Hey, leave Beavers alone, they are Canada's national animal. Though not sure what that means now? :)

My understanding...

[Toba82 (871257)]

IANAOC (I am not an organic chemist), but the way I see it, previous buckyball compounds needed to have the soccer ball shape because of the number of free electrons in the molecular bond didn't allow the adjacent pentagon structure to exist. Is it possible that the shell may not have a neutral charge? The molecule within could compensate and that might allow this 'impossible' set of bonds to work.

Re:

[itwerx (165526)]

Is it possible that the shell may not have a neutral charge?

Certainly possible (IANAOC either) but I'm actually thinking this could also have implications for string theory (a horrible misnomer IMNSHO) if there is no charge as the deformation could then only be explained by the chemically uninvolved contents of the Bucky-egg.

Re:

[zrobotics (760688)]

I recently took college chem, and if I recall correctly, 'Buckyballs' can actually be made into tubes, which have been used in some nanotech applications. Geometrically, if you were to take a soccer ball/buckyball, cut it in half along the seams, and then add in alternating rows of hexagons and pentagons, it forms a tube with hemispherical ends. It's hard to explain, but here's a link: http://www.azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=1295 (sorry, no html).

Considering the shape of these tubes, I wonder why an egg-s

Re:

[IainMH (176964)]

I don't think it's anything to do with charge. Each intersection of the picture of the molecule represents a carbon atom. Even when you break the isolated pentagon rule, each carbon atom is still only connected to 3 other carbon atoms - just like in graphite.

It's more to do with the angles those bonds are forced to take on by the structure. Having the other elements within the cage will allow different angles to occur.

Also, I think it's more likely that the chemists involved are inorganic. :-) Fullerene

Re:

[ChemGrrl (1007879)]

Hi All, This is Christine Beavers... ya know the Mrs. Beavers. The molecule is overall uncharged. The terbuim atoms each carry a 3+, the nitride is a -3, and the fullerene cage itself carries a 6-. I don't endorse the blog, because it does misstate some things, and it is an opinion at the end. Not to mention the copyright infringement of stealing the JACS image, not the one I gave to UCD news.... hmmm I feel compromised... well I sure didn't ask him to write about my paper.

Re:My understanding...

[IainMH (176964)]

Just because you don't understand it, it doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

Re:

[curious.corn (167387)]

I think the parent post is more like: "since you're into this stuff, is it real or just horseshit"

If you add another terbium atom

[thewils (463314)]

You could give it to the Kiwis to play with ;)

Munchies

[yellekc (819322)]

Anyone one else hungry for the worlds smallest omelet?

Finally!

[ZSpade (812879)]

Now that the drive is well underway, how long till they finish the Heart of Gold?

nano tubes

[Blighten (992637)]

This is actually a pretty interesting break-through, given that carbon nano-tubes (the discovery of bucky balls lead to the formations of them) are somewhat limited in their capabilities to form certain angles. I'm wondering how stable these 'deformations' are in accord to the whole system... as bucky balls are very stable.

Can't wait for the bucky chicken!

[Deflatamouse! (132424)]

But this time we know the egg definitely came first!

Direct link to story

[Yetihehe (971185)]

Direct link to story http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.las so?id=7891 [ucdavis.edu]

How stable is this?

[pimpimpim (811140)]

It looks like there's a lot of internal energy in such a system, especially when there is something inside. Couldn't you do some neat energy tricks with this?

Re:

[bar-agent (698856)]

If you trap a metallic molecule inside, maybe it'll bounce around inside the cage and generate a miniscule magnetic field?

Aside from that, well, the point of carbon bonds is that they're stable, yeah? So it's like asking if you can do a lot of tricks with a rock laying on the ground. The answer is, "not so many."

Unless it's a pet rock, in which case it can "stay!" pretty good.

Oops, WTF is that?!

[6Yankee (597075)]

TFA: The experiment was actually part of a project to find new, more predictable ways to make fullerenes

...and then this happens. Back to the drawing-board, guys!

I guess that's the nature of science, though - it's the surprises that are most interesting.

Nice picture.

[wkitchen (581276)]

> west
You have entered the laboratory.
> look
There is an image of the buckyegg here.
There is a door to the east.
> _

What do you think they'll be useful for?

[Telastyn (206146)]

No offense to PHDs involved, but wouldn't the eggs be very useful because of their inherent lack of symmetry, similarly to how water is useful because one side is very electro-negative? Depending on the properties of the contained metal, I imagine the eggs would produce very similar effects.

Let's review the letter "S"

[boyfaceddog (788041)]

"pentagon rules" are rules made by the Pentagon and miscapitalized.
"pentagon rule" is a rule about pentagon shapes.

"Editor" is a person who knows the difference.

WTF?

[dthree (458263)]

What does this have to do with FIFA?

Re:Am I one of the few that at least sorta underst

[bladesjester (774793)]

Buckyballs are made of pentegon and hexagon formations of carbon atoms (look at a soccer ball. same basic pattern). What's different here is that two of the pentagons are touching, which scientists previously thought could not happen.

I first learned about buckyballs in my college chem classes back in 98 or 99 so I thought this article was actually pretty interesting.

Re:

[Aussie (10167)]

Maybe they are more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.

Re:

[creimer (824291)]

I wonder why Anonymous Cowards have this fascination with sheep? Either they can't sleep or they're thinking of their girlfriends out on the farm.

Re:

[ceoyoyo (59147)]

You're right. In fact, you should cleanse yourself of all the weird nano-cages floating around in your blood stream. Like hemoglobin, for instance.