Newcastle Local Section combines chemistry with sport

Our Newcastle Local Section brought science and sport together in the 2014 Bucky Ball Tournament. An annual event that reaches back the better part of a decade, the five-aside football competition takes its name from the buckminsterfullerene ‘bucky’ ball, whose shape resembles a football.

The aim of the event is to bring together groups of chemists from different disciplines through friendly competition. The idea is to establish relationships between academia and industry to foster communication and the exchange of ideas.

Sport supports science

In addition, this year’s winning team from the University of Northumbria also aided the work of a PhD student at the university, Chamila Denawaka, whose research uses gas-chromatography-coupled ion mobility spectroscopy to study the effects of volatile organic compounds present in underarm odour on polyester, by wearing special polyester shirts.

Other participants included teams from Newcastle University, Aesica pharmaceuticals, and some mixed industry and academic teams. The inevitably inventive team names such as Sporting Abeergut join past puns Crystalline Palace and Aromatica Madrid.

RSC Newcastle Local Section Secretary Mrs Remya Norris presented the bucky ball trophy, which was sponsored by Thomas Swan and Co. Ltd at the tournament’s inception, to winning team Copper Nanotubes of Northumbria University.