“Some allotropes of carbon: a) diamond; b) graphite; c) lonsdaleite; d-f) fullerenes (C60, C540, C70); g) amorphous carbon; h) carbon nanotube.”
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon
Carbon’s allotropes, it turns out, can be categorized in two molecular formats:
1. Crystalline (as in diamonds, and even the lowly graphite, whose crystalline structure is layered) and
2. Amorphous (as in charcoal).
Crystalline structures are ordered; amorphous ones are arranged “higgledy piggledy” as Isaac Asimov put it. So I shouldn’t be surprised to discover that amorphous-structured charcoal does not lend itself to structural integrity. Still, I wouldn’t be an artist if I weren’t an optimist.
