Can a chemistry experiment be beautiful? Philip Ball gives his opinion and invites us to see beauty in everything
Can we call a chemistry experiment ’beautiful’? Chemists evidently think so; but what exactly do they mean by it? And which are then the most beautiful experiments of all?
One thing that does set chemists talking about beauty is molecules. The football-shaped carbon cluster C60 has been called ’the most beautiful molecule’ on account of its delightful symmetry. The master of organic synthesis Robert Woodward had a clear appreciation of ’molecular beauty’, and his daughter Crystal felt that ’the delight and aesthetic pleasure’ he took from his products ’contributed to his skill’. A sense of Platonic beauty was what motivated many chemists (including Woodward) to try to make the polyhedral hydrocarbon dodecahedrane (C20H20), a challenge that Leo Paquette at Ohio State University, US, first conquered in 198