Back in 2012, Orangepeel and the Australian Nanotechnology Alliance (ANA) produced a buckyball puzzle to encourage understanding of nanotechnology. Tens of thousands of these puzzles were printed with a grant from the Federal Government. The puzzles were distributed to schools, businesses, at conferences and trade conventions.
Six years later I came across a puzzle while cleaning out some office cupboards. Back in 2012 and subsequent years, I must have put together at least a thousand puzzles in different demonstrator environments.
I first saw a buckyball puzzle at the Materials Research Society conference in Boston the year before. On returning to Australia, the ANA teamed with the then ARC Centre of Excellence in Functional Nanomaterials who provided the images, and the Federal Government to produce our own Australian version.
After all these years, assembling a buckyball was a very satisfying distraction!