A ten-year-old schoolgirl from the American city of Kansas City, fulfilling a teacher's assignment, accidentally invented a previously unknown molecular structure - a new substance that may help in creating new methods of energy storage. This was reported by the press service of the University of California named after Humboldt
5th grade student Claire Leisen attends a Maria Montessori school. At one of the lessons, she and her classmates received a task - to assemble models of molecules from colored balls - "atoms" and plastic sticks - chemical bonds. Claire assembled from parts - "atoms" of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon - a structure that seemed very strange to her teacher Kenneth Beer.
He emailed his friend Bob Zellner, a chemistry professor at the university, and sent him a photo of the strange design. Zellner could not immediately tell his friend if chemists knew this substance.
The scientist studied the database of articles, which contains scientific papers on chemistry since 1904, and found only one article where this substance was mentioned - tetranitratoxycarbon. However, in the fictional schoolgirl structure, the atoms were arranged in a different order, so the chemical properties of this molecule must be different.
B. Zellner, who is engaged in computer modeling of new chemical compounds, investigated the structure and came to the conclusion that this substance can be used to store energy. He noted that it contains the same groups of atoms as nitroglycerin - a powerful explosive. Perhaps Claire really invented a new type of explosive, or maybe something else.
The scientist submitted an article about the new substance to the journal Computational and Theoretical Chemistry. As a result, Claire Leisen became a co-author of the article at the age of ten, writes TSN.