An old photo from Paul Hildebrandt

I got a nice picture of D. Shechtman with Zometoy from Paul Hildebrandt, President of Zometool Inc:

(NIST, 1985)

Zometool models at the Quasicrystal international conference

The newest Nobel laureate in Chemistry, D. Shechtman, was invited to Taiwan to participate a quasicrystal international conference held in the National Taipei University of Technology (May 7-9), a university very close to the National Taiwan University where I am working.
Yuan-Chia, Qian-Rui, and Hsin-Yu moved the two large zometool models, a 3D quasicrystal consisting of two types of golden rhombohedra (prolate and oblate) and a six-layer carbon onion (C20, C80, C180, C320, C500, and C720), to the conference's lobby area. Most participants seem to enjoy these two types of quasicrystal models, cluster and tiling, a lot.

Prof. Shechtman took a picture of me in front of the zometool model of carbon onion.

I also gave Prof. Shechtman a bead model of high-genus fullerene, a topologically nontrivial quasicrystal :-), as a gift.

Two hyperbolic graphitic surfaces

I made a bead model of hyperbolic graphitic surface by connecting 10 tetrahedral C₈₄ units (the model on the right, the one on the left is the C168). The skeleton of this model is similar to that of an adamantane of the smallest unit of diamond.

Workshop in Rome (ICCE & ECRICE)

I was invited to give a workshop, An exploration of molecular shape through mathematical beading, in the 22th International Conference on Chemical Education (ICCE) and 11th European Conference on Research in Chemical Education (ECRICE) which will be held in Rome, 15-20 July 2012. Check the website here www.iccecrice2012.org for the detailed schedule.

AN EXPLORATION OF MOLECULAR SHAPE THROUGH MATHEMATICAL BEADING
Chern Chuang, Chia-Chin Tsoo, Bih-Yaw Jin
Department of Chemistry, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan;
National Center for High-Performance Computing, Hsin-Chu, Taiwan; R.O.C.
E-mail: byjin@ntu.edu.tw

A few years ago, we discovered that beading an old and traditional craft could be applied systematically to construct faithful three-dimensional molecular shapes of fullerenes and various kinds of complicated graphitic materials including Platonic solids, C60, higher fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, nanotori, nanohelices, high-genus fullerenes, singly-, and triply-periodic minimal surfaces.1-3 Unlike the standard molecular physical model, chemical bonds are represented by beads explicitly, while atoms are not shown in a bead model. The hard-sphere repulsion among beads in a bead model effectively mimic the repulsion between different chemical bonds in a molecule. Thus, the molecular shape of fullerenes can be faithfully modelled by beading technique.

In this workshop, we will show participants how to construct systematically molecular models of fullerenes with beads and how to interpret correctly microscopic meaning of these bead models. Particularly, participants will learn simple beading techniques and build bead models of a dodecahedron and a truncated icosahedron, which are C20 and C60 respectively.

1. Chuang, C.; Jin, B.-Y.; Tsoo, C.-C.; Tang, N. Y.-Wa; Cheung, M. P. S.; Cuccia, L. A., J. Chem. Edu 2012 , 89, 414–416.
2. Chuang, C.; Jin, B.-Y.; Tsoo, C.-C., Proceedings of Bridges: Mathematics, Music, Art, Architecture, Culture, 2011, 523-526.
3. The beaded molecules blog: http://thebeadedmolecules.blogspot.com/.

Comments from Prof. Henry Bent

I mailed the reprint of my paper with Prof. Cuccia, "Molecular Modeling of Fullerenes with Beads" (J. Chem. Edu 2012 , 89 (3), 414–416) to Prof. Henry Bent two months ago. He is the person who proposed the tangent sphere model in the 60s. He made the following comments on the beaded molecules:

"... contributions to the literature on molecular modeling such sophisticated molecules with so elegantly simple methods: beads and string, that's all!"
"The saturation and directional character of chemical affinity falls out naturally from your bead models without any need to refer, e.g., to Schrödinger's equation and atomic orbitals when constructing approximate electron density profiles, even for molecules as complicated as the fullerenes." 

Workshops in Japan

Prof. Sonoda of Kyushu university invited me to Japan next month to have a few lectures and workshops in a few different places of Japan. Prof. Sonoda also invited Mr. Kazunori Horibe when I give a workshop in Nagoya Child and Family Center.