Chemistry Assignment - "Energy"?

Question

1. use materials of your choosing to construct models showing the structure of diamond, graphite and one of the fullerenes (buckyballs).

- what materials are suitable??

2. Account for the different physical properties and uses for diamond, graphite and fullerene you have chosen (buckyball) , in terms of bonding.

3. Evaluate your models in terms of their ability to reflect the structures of these substances.

PLEASE HELP, and give me any tips or advice.

THANK YOU.

Answer 1

1. The best would be one of those molecular model kits, but those are expensive (especially for a buckyball).  I would recommend gumdrop or marshmallow atoms with toothpick bonds as a cheap alternative, but the bonds will not be very rigid...

Globs of hot glue for atoms with toothpick bonds might work well - give it a try.

2. If the model works well, you should be able to see that it is harder to move atoms around in diamond than it is to move sheets of graphite - hence, diamonds are hard while graphite is slippery.  There are no bonds between fullerenes, so it is even easier to move these around (making more than one model would be a pain though).  I will assume that you do not need to cover electronic and optical properties - if you do, look up "conjugated systems."

3.  This depends on what materials you use and how well you build the model...

However, your graphite and fullerene models will most likely have double bonds.  In reality, these double bonds are delocalized between more than one pair of atoms, which makes a big difference for electronic and optical properties.