Posted: Feb 29, 2012 2:37 pm
Mazille wrote:Clara Lazen is the discoverer of tetranitratoxycarbon, a molecule constructed of, obviously, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon. It's got some interesting possible properties, ranging from use as an explosive to energy storage. Lazen is listed as the co-author of a recent paper on the molecule. But that's not what's so interesting and inspiring about this story. What's so unusual here is that Clara Lazen is a ten-year-old fifth-grader in Kansas City, MO.
Source
Cool, eh? What are the chances of her assembling this by accident from scratch, though?
Maybe it's just me being cynical but in my view, building a model of a potentially viable model in a chemistry class doesn't qualify as either "creating" or "discovering" a new molecule. I didn't get the impression from reading the article that anyone has actually synthesised this yet.
Still - it's an interesting looking molecule.