3D Printing a Fullerene Model

In this video, we 3D printed a molecule of C70. The 3D printer required an '.stl' file and the print job took around 7 hours. The file we used can be found here (www.thingivers....
C70 is a common fullerene, but not as common as the much more well-known C60. C70 is rugby ball shaped. Both C60 and C70 contain 12 pentagons, the same goes for any closed fullerene molecule composed of pentagons and hexagons. This can be mathematically proven and is called an 'Euler characteristic'.
As a covalent molecular structure, C70 is expected to have a low melting point: weak intermolecular forces between molecules must be overcome. This requires only a small amount of heat energy.
Molecules like C60 and C70 were predicted in the 1960s. They were eventually discovered by accident in 1985 when chemists fired lasers onto graphite in an attempt to recreate interstellar plasmas. This work led to the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Thank you to the Rugby School D&T Department for their help and expertise!