Letter: Letter: Not buckyballs

From R. R. HAMILTON

As Jim Baggott says (‘Great balls of carbon’, 6 July), the name buckminsterfullerene
given to the globular carbon molecule C₆₀ is something of a mouthful.
It is also, unfortunately, something of a misnomer.

While the late Richard Buckminster Fuller would undoubtedly have been
delighted by this use of his name (although, perhaps, less than wholly delighted
to be associated with the term ‘buckyballs’), he would have felt bound to
point out that while a football composed of 12 pentagonal panels and 20
hexagonal panels has the 60 vertices needed to provide a model of the C₆₀
molecule, a sphere comprising 12 pentagonal sections and 20 hexagonal sections
and built on the geodesic principle of the Buckminster Fuller dome would
instead have 92 vertices.

A Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome is made up of interconnected struts
forming pentagonal and hexagonal sections. Each section comprises 5 (or
6) struts outlining the pentagon (or hexagon), with 5 (or 6) further struts
radiating from its 5 (or 6) corners to meet at a vertex over the centre
of the pentagon (or hexagon). These additional central vertices (12 for
the pentagon and 20 for the hexagons) bring the total to 92. I have verified
this by counting the vertices in my geodesic greenhouse.

Now, if ever somebody discovers a globular molecule containing 92 atoms
. . .

R. R. Hamilton Ashted, Surrey