Question

The first fullerene was discovered in:
A. 1970
B. 1967
C. 1997
D. 1985

Answer 1

Hint:
Fullerene, also known as buckminsterfullerene, any of a series of hollow carbon molecules that creates either a closed cage or a cylinder. The mechanisms by which long chained carbon molecules are produced in interstellar space and circumstellar shells, graphite was vaporized by laser irradiation, creating an incredibly stable cluster involving 60 carbons.

Complete step by step solution:
The first fullerene was discovered in 1985 by Sir Harold W. Kroto of the United Kingdom and by Richard E. Smalley and Robert F. Curl, Jr., of the United States. Utilizing a laser to vaporize graphite rods in an atmosphere of helium gas, these chemists and their assistants acquired cage like molecules composed of 60 carbon atoms \[{{c}_{_{60}}}\]united together by single and double bonds to create a hollow sphere with 12 pentagonal and 20 hexagonal faces—a design that was a duplicate of a football or soccer ball. In 1996, three of them were awarded the Nobel Prize for their pioneering result.

Concerning the topic of what sort of 60-carbon molecule structure may offer ascent to a super stable species, they proposed a shortened icosahedron, a polygon with 60 vertices and 32 faces, 12 of which are pentagonal and 20 hexagonal. This item was ordinarily experienced as the football. The \[{{C}_{_{60}}}\] Particle which came about when a carbon molecule was set at very vertex of this structure had all valences fulfilled by two single bonds, and one double bond, had many resonance structures and by all the accounts, to be fragrant.The technique they drawn to produce and detect this unusual molecule involved the vaporization of carbon species from the surface of a solid disk of graphite into a high-density helium flow, applying a focused pulsed laser.They chose the imaginative name buckminsterfullerene for the cluster in honor of the designer-inventor of the geodesic domes whose ideas had influenced their structure conjecture.

Hence, the accurate answer here is D. 1985

Note:
The fullerenes, specifically the highly symmetrical \[{{C}_{_{60}}}\] sphere, have a beauty and elegance that excites the imagination of scientists and nonscientists alike, as they bridge aesthetic gaps between the sciences, architecture, mathematics, engineering, and the visual arts.