A Morning by the Pond: the Buckyball Conundrum
Posted: Wednesday, December 28, 2011
by Jack H. Schick
Clef and I and our two dogs were sitting in the bushes behind Jim’s garage the other morning. We were goose hunting. Well, we weren’t exactly ‘hunting’ as most people would understand the word. We were sitting on little camp stools with our shotguns in our laps, huddled under camouflage netting, tooting on our goose calls. We weren’t actually out ‘hunting’ for them. We were just waiting for them to fly by or land at Jim’s pond.
When you're sitting there in one spot for hours, conversation ebbs and flows. I like to hear myself talk anyway so, usually, I just keep rattling on. Clef is often silent for long periods, and other times he just fends me off with grunts or by saying “Uh, huh” at the appropriate time. Occasionally, he’s provocative, mumbling “Bull s—t,” or “You’re crazy,” or something like that. Sometimes I actually perk his interest and he asks questions.
The other day I was rambling on about the method of meditation I use in Quaker Meetings for Worship (now you can understand why he sometimes doesn’t hear a word I say, or tells me to shut up). I described how, to prepare for proper meditation, I mentally get outside of the Universe and look down on it from, what I imagine is, God’s point of view. No geese had come by in quite a while so he was kind of bored and susceptible. He thought about it for a moment then asked, “What does the Universe look like from there?”
I said, “It looks like a big, transparent buckyball.”
Clef’s a pretty bright guy, but I hit on something he was unfamiliar with. “A buckyball!?” He actually turned his head this time and gave me that “Bull s—t!” look he has. “What the hell’s a buckyball?”
Not only do I like to hear myself talk, sometimes I like to think I’m smarter than everybody (it’s one of the long list of reasons I don’t have many friends). “You don’t know about buckyballs?” I condescendingly sniffed. He just stared at me, so I went on. “It’s the biggest molecule that displays the wave/particle duality.” I said.
“So?” he never broke eye contact. I could tell he was ticked off.
“It looks like a soccer ball,” I said.
“Why the hell didn’t you say that?” he growled and shook his head.
“Well, my universe actually looks more like a buckyball than a soccer ball, that’s why. At least it looks like the pictures of buckyballs I’ve seen.” I went on.
“Shut up with your buckyballs!” He finally said. “I hear something.”
I heard it too. Geese were coming. We pulled the dogs in close behind the bushes with us and started honking on the goose calls. About twenty of them came in over the far tree line, locked their wings and started to glide toward a landing. Then, they spotted our decoys and pulled up. We honked frantically, but they weren’t falling for that one again. It was the best shot we’d get, so Clef and I jumped up and emptied our guns. Like the last two times, they all flew off, a little spooked maybe, but unharmed.
We cursed our shooting, gathered up our empty shells and threw them on the pile with all the others we’d fired that morning. We decided to move our decoys around. Maybe it was just the way we had them set up. We moved a couple to right in front of us. We figured if they looked to where all the honking was coming from they’d at least see a bunch of plastic geese there instead of just us and the dogs hiding under our camo net.
When we got settled back in I asked Clef, “You wanna hear about buckyballs?”
“Not really,” he mumbled. "But, go ahead." He pivoted his stool so his back was toward me.
…They’re molecules with 60 carbon atoms. Their structure is a truncated icosahedron (arf, arf). That’s a hollow spherical object with 32 facets, 12 of them pentagons and the rest hexagons—very similar to a soccer ball. They were discovered by Chemist Richard Smalley in 1985. Similar molecules of just carbon are known to exist around certain carbon rich stars. Other similar molecules have been found in soot formed during incomplete combustion of organic material. They created the first buckyballs by blasting graphite with a laser. They named it after American architect R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), who designed geodesic domes. Actually they’re called Buckminsterfullerene and there are a bunch of similar molecules called fullerenes. There isn’t much use for them since they’re expensive to make, but they’re doing research to see if they can be used as insulators, conductors, lubricants, coatings, catalysts or optical devices...
Clef didn’t move, didn't say anything. I swear I heard him snoring. “Hey!” I shouted.
“What?” he sort of lurched in his seat.
“So that’s about all I know about buckyballs,” I confessed.
“Good,” he said. He was quiet for a while then asked, “So, you think the universe looks like a soccer ball?”
“No! That’s what I’ve been telling you! It looks like a buckyball! At least that’s the way I imagine it.” I said.
About then we heard another flock of geese coming. They seemed just as leery as the previous ones. We emptied our guns again, but this time we got one each. One was just wounded. The dogs had to chase it down. Jim soon came out to see how we were doing. He was a little disappointed. He figured with all the shooting we’d done that morning we probably had a pile of them. I asked him if he knew anything about buckyballs. He said, “All I need to, or want to,” and quickly went back in the house.
This Article has been viewed 357 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Another funny article about your life, I like it....buckyball ...hahahaha Only you would come up with that, and be able to explain it in such detail.it's all true, of course. Thanks for reading and commenting
Good article Jack, thanks for sharingThanks for reading and commenting
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.