Skip to main content

The Wonder Element

“No element is more essential to life than carbon,” says the book Nature’s Building Blocks. The unique characteristics of carbon enable it to bond with itself and many other chemical elements, thus forming millions of compounds, more of which are constantly being discovered or synthesized.
As the examples here show, carbon atoms can also combine to form various shapes, including chains, pyramids, rings, sheets, and tubes. Carbon truly is a wonder element!
DIAMOND

A diamond
Carbon atoms form pyramids, called tetrahedrons, making the structure extremely rigid and making diamond the hardest naturally occurring substance known. A perfect diamond is essentially a single molecule of carbon atoms.
GRAPHITE


A lead pencil
Tightly bonded carbon atoms are set out in loosely bonded layers that can slide away from one another like sheets of paper on a stack. Because of these characteristics, graphite is both a fine lubricant and a key compound in lead pencils. *
GRAPHENE

A pencil trace
This refers to a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal mesh, or lattice. Graphene has a tensile strength many times that of steel. A pencil trace may have small amounts of graphene in single or multiple layers.
 FULLERENES

Fullerenes
These hollow molecules of carbon come in shapes that include microscopic balls and tubes called nanotubes. They are measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter.
LIVING ORGANISMS

Living cells that contain carbon
The many cells that make up plants, animals, and humans are built on a framework of carbon—an element found in carbohydrates, fats, and amino acids.

Popular posts from this blog

The Lantern of the Photuris Firefly

THE lantern, or light organ, of a particular Photuris firefly is covered with jagged scales that dramatically enhance the brightness of the light that the insect produces.   * Jagged scales Consider: Researchers have found that tiny scales on the lantern surface of some fireflies form a corrugated pattern, somewhat like overlapping shingles or tiles. The scales tilt up at one end by just 3 micrometers —less than one twentieth the thickness of a human hair. Yet this tiny tilt lets the lantern shine almost 50 percent more brightly than it would if the scales formed an even surface!
Read more

An Overview of Indonesia

Land  Straddling the equator between Australia and continental Asia, Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelago. Most of its more than 17,500 islands feature rugged mountains and dense tropical forests. With more than 100 active volcanoes, it is also the most active volcanic region on earth.
Read more

PORTRAITS FROM THE PASTIgnaz Semmelweis

IGNAZ SEMMELWEIS may not be a household name, yet his work has benefited most modern families. Born in Buda (now Budapest), Hungary, he received his medical degree at the University of Vienna in 1844. On taking up his post as assistant to a professor at the First Maternity Clinic of Vienna’s General Hospital in 1846, Semmelweis faced an appalling reality —more than 13 percent of the women giving birth there died from a disease called childbed fever. Various theories as to the cause of this disease had been proposed, yet no one had solved the mystery. All attempts to reduce the mortality rate proved futile. Troubled by the spectacle of numerous mothers suffering a slow, agonizing death, Semmelweis determined to find the cause of the disease and prevent it.
Read more