Designing the molecular world

Philip Ball

Some of the most exciting scientific developments in recent years have come not from theoretical physicists, astronomers, or molecular biologists but instead from the chemistry lab. Chemists have created super-conducting ceramics for brain scanners, designed liquid crystal flat screens for televisions and watch displays, and made fabrics that change color while you wear them. They have fashioned metals from plastics, drugs from crude oil, and have pinpointed the chemical pollutants affecting our atmosphere and are now searching for remedies for the imperiled planet. Philip Bail, an editor for the prestigious magazine Nature, lets the lay reader into the world of modern chemistry. Here chemists make molecules dance to laser light and they find new uses for the improbable buckminsterfullerene molecules - 60-atom carbon soccerballs, dubbed "buckyballs" - which seem to have applications...

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