LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Boron: Compounds
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Boron suboxide (chemical formula B60) is a solid compound of boron and oxygen. In the photographs available in the literature it seems to appear as a group of twenty crystals with the shape of a truncated golden rhombohedron, together forming a range of shapes from an icosahedron to a truncated icosahedron. This Demonstration lets you control the extent of truncation (a) from 0 to 1/3. Additional controls let you move the units in a radial direction (b) or truncate the tetrahedral part (c) in order to have a compound explorer. In the various combinations of the control settings (a, b, c) it is possible to see many different shapes, such as the icosidodecahedron (0, 2.618, 0), the great icosahedron (0, -1, 1), the rhombic triacontahedron and its stellations (for example, the great rhombic triacontahedron) (0, -1, 0), the rhombic hexecontahedron (0.618, 2.618, 0), and the compound of 5 cubes (-0.618, -1, 0). In certain combinations, you can see models of space frames.
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Boron nitride is a material in which the extra electron of nitrogen (with respect to carbon) in some ways compensates for boron's deficiency of an electron. Boron nitride can be used to make crystals that are extremely hard, second in hardness only to diamond, and the similarity of this compound to diamond extends to other applications. Like diamond, boron nitride acts as an electrical insulator but is an excellent conductor of heat.
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Boron is electron deficient, possessing a vacant p-orbital. Compounds of boron often behave as Lewis acids, readily bonding with electron rich species in an attempt to quench boron's insatiable hunger for electrons.
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The hardest Boron compound is created synthetically. Rhenium diboride (ReB2) can actually scratch diamond, giving it a higher than 10 rank in the Mohs scale of mineral hardness and making it one of the three hardest known substances - the other two being ultrahard fullerite and aggregated diamond nanorods.
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Compounds