Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An allotrope of carbon composed of any of various cagelike molecules that consist only of an even number of carbon atoms, are often spherical in shape, and are composed of hexagonal and pentagonal groups of atoms.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun inorganic chemistry any of a class of allotropes of carbon having hollow molecules whose atoms lie at the vertices of a polyhedron having 12 pentagonal and 2 or more hexagonal faces
  • noun organic chemistry any closed-cage compound having twenty or more carbon atoms consisting entirely of 3-coordinate carbon atoms

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a form of carbon having a large molecule consisting of an empty cage of sixty or more carbon atoms

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[After Richard Buckminster Fuller (from the resemblance of their configurations to his geodesic domes) + –ene.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

from Richard Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome

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Examples

  • The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon 3,000 kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and aimlessly floating chunks of rock.

    Free AudioBook: Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder 2009

  • The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon 3,000 kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and aimlessly floating chunks of rock.

    June 2009 2009

  • The world of Virga is a huge fullerene balloon dotted with artificial suns that light up nations which, in turn, are populated by towns.

    REVIEW: Pirate Sun by Karl Schroeder 2008

  • There was also some kind of autoassembling fullerene tube structure at the core of it that made it electrically conductive.

    Eight Maids a'Milking 2010

  • If you have a many-layered fullerene ball, structured like an onion, it approaches the density of graphite.

    Making Light: The tastemakers of tomorrow 2010

  • There are four known allotropes of carbon: amorphous, graphite, diamond, and fullerene.

    Carbon 2008

  • Virga is a world made of a giant pressurized fullerene balloon with an artificial sun at its center.

    Boing Boing: December 3, 2006 - December 9, 2006 Archives 2006

  • Named after the architect Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic dome the fullerene resembles, the sturdy carbon molecule (also nicknamed buckyball) has emerged as one of the most versatile tools in the rapidly developing nanotechnology arsenal.

    Tiny Weapons With Giant Potential 2007

  • At Houston's Rice University, where physicist Richard Smalley discovered the fullerene in 1985 (and in 1996 shared the Nobel Prize for his achievement), researchers have developed another platform for nanoscale drug delivery called the nanoshell.

    Tiny Weapons With Giant Potential 2007

  • "The fullerene goes like a bomb right through the chimney," says Dr. Michael Rosenblum, of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

    Tiny Weapons With Giant Potential 2007

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