多少年以来,化学家和数不清的教科书在介绍碳的基本形态时,都只提到两种,即金刚石和石墨。这一金科玉律在20世纪80年代突然不管用了,有人通过一系列实验证明,碳的基本形态除了金刚石和石墨之外还有第三种形态。于是几乎一夜之间,有关碳的教科书都变得过时了。然而比这一发现本身更富戏剧性的是,这一石破天惊的发现乃是无心插柳的结果。 For years, chemists and countless textbooks have referred to only two of the basic forms of carbon, namely diamond and graphite. This golden rule suddenly disappeared in the 1980s. Some people have shown through a series of experiments that the basic form of carbon has a third form besides diamond and graphite. Almost overnight, the textbooks on carbon became obsolete. What is even more dramatic than the discovery itself, however, is the result of unmotivated discoveries.