Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 20, 1992 TAG: 9203200188
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But ask the Waynesboro teen-ager about how she made buckyballs - molecules that are being hailed through scientific America - and it's technical, all the way.
Here's her simplified, in-a-nutshell version: "You take a helium atmosphere and vaporize carbon in it. The carbon reorganizes into a buckyball."
There are a few other things you need, of course.
An arc welder. Something called a "vacuum desiccator jar." A piece of circuit board.
The project has brought Amy Popelish, 17, first place in local and regional science fairs this year. She's planning on taking it to the state competition in April.
Popelish, a student at Wilson Memorial High School, started reading about buckyballs, a symmetrical carbon molecule, in science magazines last year.
"This was something completely new in chemistry," she said. "And if you work with it, you may be the one to discover something new about it."
Thus, the basement project was born.
Popelish's family has been building a new house in Waynesboro, and it was in that open basement that she filled the desiccator jar with helium from an ordinary balloon.
That created the proper atmosphere for the carbon rods, which were heated. Theoretically, the buckyballs would be in the soot.
To isolate them, Popelish used the solvent naphthalene (read: melted mothballs). Buckyballs are supposed to dissolve in organic solvents.
What she did next is a little hard to explain over the phone, Popelish said, but eventually, she sent three flasks to H.C. Dorn, a chemist at Virginia Tech, for testing.
"The first sample didn't show any C60. One had a peak that could be C60. And the last one definitely peaked. I had made some. It's in the microgram range."
(C60 is another term for buckyballs - a carbon molecule with 60 carbon atoms).
Dorn called the experiment "rather remarkable."
But it proves, too, that the buckyball molecule is not out of this world. "It's not too difficult to make if you know how," Dorn said.
Still, the judges at some of the competitions were a little skeptical of Popelish's project.
"Do you think she really made buckyballs?" one judge reportedly asked a student in Popelish's class.
"Yeah, she really did that," the student said.
More easy to accept is the model of the buckyball, available at your local sporting goods store. The molecule, the roundest, most-symmetrical large molecule found so far, is shaped like a soccer ball.
"You just color the lines and put a carbon atom everyplace lines touch," Popelish said.
The high school senior has been interested in science for years and will likely pursue a related degree when she heads off for college in the fall.
"When I was little, my bedtime stories ranged from Dr. Seuss to Scientific American," she said. "Of course, my dad would always read it over first, then explain it with pictures."
by CNB