The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
n. An extremely stable, ball-shaped carbon molecule, C60, reminiscent of a geodesic dome, and believed to occur naturally in soot. It was the first fullerene to be discovered.
n. an allotrope of carbon having a hollow molecule consisting of 60 atoms arranged in 12 pentagonal and 20 hexagonal faces to form a truncated icosahedron; the smallest of the fullerenes
WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
n. a spheroidal fullerene; the first known example of a fullerene
Word Usage
"To understand how the carbon atoms in buckminsterfullerene are connected to each other, we need only recall the pattern on the surface of a soccer ball, or European football."