Originally published 20 January 1992
Each year around Christmas time, Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, chooses the most important science story of the previous 12 months.
The top story of 1991 was buckyballs, astonishing spherical molecules of 60 carbon atoms arranged like the pattern on a soccer ball (a pinhead would be an overly generous playing field for a game of buckysoccer). Scientists have learned how to produce these molecules in substantial quantities. Buckyballs have chemical, electronic, and magnetic properties that promise a myriad of useful applications.
The most important science story of 1990 was new techniques for making films and crystals of synthetic diamond. Few substances are as hard, transparent, and wear-resistant as diamond. Diamond also has interesting thermal and electrical properties. As synthetic diamonds becomes common and cheap, we can expect to see them everywhere, from scratch resistant coatings on watch crystals to computer chips made from diamond rather than silicon.
Common carbon
What do buckyballs and diamonds have in common? They are both forms of pure carbon. For two consecutive years, carbon has topped the science sweepstakes.
Carbon! The most ordinary of elements.
It’s as if Joe Schmoe from Podunk, Iowa, had come out of nowhere to become Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” for two years in a row.”
Who would have imagined it? Not even that master of invention himself, Buckminster Fuller (for whom buckyballs are named because of their resemblance to his geodesic domes), could have dreamed that plain old carbon held so many surprises.
Plain old carbon. As plain as soot, as plain as the lead in a pencil, as plain as the charcoal in a barbecue. And old — as old as fire, as old as the charcoal cave drawings of our Cro-Magnon ancestors. Carbon was one of the first elements to be utilized by humans in a pure form.
Plain and old, but hardly dull.
Of the 92 elements that make up the natural world, carbon is the most prolific when it comes to making molecules. Chemical compounds based on carbon outnumber the compounds of all other elements put together. We divide chemistry into two branches: organic chemistry (the chemistry of carbon compounds), and inorganic chemistry (the chemistry of everything else).
Carbon is special because of its ability to make links with itself, a tendency exploited in making buckyballs. Chains and rings of carbon are at the heart of almost everything interesting in the natural world — sex hormones, stimulant drugs, painkillers, tranquilizers, gasoline and coal, plastics, dyes, soaps and detergents, artificial fibers, explosives, the pigments of fruits, the scents of flowers; the list is endless.
Basis of life
Most importantly, carbon is the element of life. Every living thing is composed of carbon compounds.
Follow a typical journey of a carbon atom:
A candle burns, releasing carbon atoms. Some of atoms link in pairs to make soot. Others combine with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, and drift away in the air. A flowering plant steals carbon dioxide from the air, and with sunlight makes glucose (sugar), by that wonderful process known as photosynthesis. The flower’s sweet nectar attracts a bee. The bee makes honey and wax. From the wax, a candle is made. The candle burns.
And so it goes, as carbon atoms cycle from place to place, stirring and animating the surface of the planet. Carbon, plain old carbon, is life’s essence.
According to the chemist P. W. Atkins, carbon’s kingliness as an element stems from its mediocrity; it does most things, and does nothing to extremes. By virtue of its moderation, carbon dominates nature.
Now scientists have discovered a whole new class of three-dimensional carbon molecules, of which buckyballs were the first. Already we are hearing about inflated buckyballs (buckyballs with more than 60 atoms), buckybabies (lopsided buckyballs with less than 60 atoms), buckytubes (long hollow buckymolecules), bunnyballs (buckyballs with ear-like chemical appendages), fuzzyballs (buckyballs with 60 attached hydrogen atoms), and buckycages (buckyballs with an atom of another element trapped inside).
Buckyballs with attachments! Buckyballs with cores! It is impossible to guess what this surprising array of carbon molecules holds in store. Suddenly, new chapters have been added to the organic chemistry book.
Synthetic diamonds and buckyballs are just the tip of the iceberg. While high-energy physicists are seeking billions of dollars to produce exotic subatomic particles that exist only fleetingly, chemists and materials scientists are discovering that ordinary matter can still surprise.
The 1990s promise to be the Decade of Materials, as scientists discover new ways of arranging familiar atoms into substances that will change our lives.
Plain old carbon leads the way. Arranged one way, carbon atoms are glittering diamond. Arranged another way, they are graphite. Now, in a third arrangement, they are buckyballs.
Keep your eye on carbon. That Joe Schmoe of elements may yet turn out to be “Atom of the Decade.”
