Mathematical Insights in the Pioneering Educational Project FSTF

TL;DR

This paper discusses a multidisciplinary educational project where students explored the structure of fullerenes through hands-on modeling, integrating mathematics and physics to enhance understanding of molecular geometry.

Contribution

It introduces a novel educational approach combining practical modeling with mathematical analysis of fullerenes for high school students.

Findings

Students successfully modeled fullerenes using paper and plastic.

The project enhanced understanding of molecular geometry and polyhedral structures.

The approach received recognition at national and international scientific conferences.

Abstract

During their pre-university year, six brilliant and motivated students joined the educational project "From Soccerene to Fullerene" (acronym FSTF) proposed by five teachers from the Departments of Physical Education and of Mathematics and Physics at the Scientific High School "G.B. Grassi" in Latina (Italy). The pupils investigated the fullerene buckyball (C60) also known as soccerene for its football-shaped structure (truncated icosahedron). From plastic sheets they cut twelve pentagons and twenty hexagons, with a calculated edge, sewing them together on a polystyrene sphere as faces of a soccer ball; they repeated the same operation twice, making two almost identical soccer-like balls. That multidisciplinary experience started on March 2013 and ended on June 2013. It was satisfactorily discussed in the 2013 school-leaving examination and raised a great interest both in the 100th national conference of the Italian Physical Society (Pisa, 2014) and in the ATINER's 9th annual international conference EMS (Athens, 2015). Now we briefly illustrate the FSTS, focusing on its mathematical features.