I have just created and uploaded several new versions of my
Buckminsterfullerene molecule (C60) or Buckyball. As an exercise, I tried to make them as different from one another as possible. Some look like architectural structures made of steel girders, some like plastic construction toys, and others like mutant frog spawn. This is partly to show that
representations of molecules are far removed from reality. The fact that they can look so different, whilst still having the correct arrangement (a truncated icosahedron) and bond lengths, is quite sobering. Other versions (not shown here) use the van der Waals radius of carbon to build very pneumatic looking molecules. I think that the one one at top right (the frog spawny one) gives a nice sense of slippery ball ball bearings held tightly together by a bluish glue.
