We are friends and have had Chem 32 and 33 together.

    Johnson, Jeevan        [email protected]
    Eidson, Scott          [email protected]
    Aminaka, Ryosuke       [email protected]
    Gupta, Leena           [email protected]
    Kneib, Julie           [email protected]
    Anderson, Jeff         [email protected]
    Kozich, Carol          [email protected]

We have had four group meetings. In meeting 1 on 2/9/97 we met and discussed our ideas about what the project entailed. In meeting 2 on 2/16/97 we met and presented our ideas to each other and selected one. In meeting 3 on 2/23/97 our group met in second floor computer lab of Laws Hall and surfed the web for a good while and found several interesting sites. In meeting four on 2/27/97 we choose the best sites and compiled the information into our project. It took several hours to complete this last part of the project.

Maniacal Buckyballs

We selected this topic because of the interesting sites that were available and the neat mpgs that we found. Before we initiated our search mechanisms we sifted through our topics to see if there was a sufficient variety of images and movies so our project wouldn't be so banal. Once we found a medley of sites we narrowed it down to fit our three central ideas, which are; background info, animation, practical applications. Yahoo and Webcrawler were used as our main search engines, through these two informational sources we collected, correlated and compiled our data.

Buckyballs were first observed in a lab in 1985. George Olah at USC won the 1994 Nobel Prize in chemistry because of his work done on fullerenes. [Ed.: Really??] For a more graphical approach of "buckyballs" take a peek at this site which will entice your eyes with the lattice structure of the molecule. For a more animated approach take a look at the collisions between a C60 and a C240 fullerene. These collisions are displayed with varying kinetic energies. If you really like those collisions here is a cool disassociative C60-benzene collision simulation from the NASA Ames Centor. For some more practical uses of Buckminster Fuller check out what they are doing with it in Los Angeles. Now take a rare look at the GREATEST BUCKMINSTER FULLERENE STRUCTURE EVER ...just kidding.: )

Not to many exciting things happened while we were working on this project. I wish I could say that we broke into the white house computers and then our terminals blew up, afterward we were imprisoned by the CIA for our computer hacking abilities...but that did not happen. Some advantages of working in groups are; you can draw from a variety of concepts and ideas, and everyone had a unique idea about how we should collaborate on the final project. Each of us became more familiar with the web and are becoming internet junkies. Some of us didn't know each other very well and now we are good friends. The smaller learning groups benefited the intake of learning immensely, if one of us was struggling with a concept others would help out with it. We reached a consensus that working in groups would be beneficial in the future.