The carbon family consists regarding the 5 elements that make up Team 14 regarding the periodic table: carbon, silicon, germanium, tin, and lead. The family is particularly interesting due to the fact that it atom structure nonmetal carbon, 3 metals tin and lead, and 3 metalloids silicon and germanium. The atoms of all Team 14 elements have 4 electrons in their outermost life level. In spite of this fact, the elements have fewer in common physically and chemically than do the members of most other families of elements. Carbon is one regarding the highest many remarkable of all chemical elements.
It occurs in all living organisms. In fact, the field of organic chemistry, which began as the learn regarding the chemistry of plants and animals, should possibly be called the chemistry of carbon compounds. In addition, carbon and its compounds are of critical importance to the globe as sources of energy. Coal, oil, and natural gasthe so-called fossil fuelsall consist of pure carbon or carbon compounds. Finally, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, the 3 oxides of carbon, are profoundly important not only within the survival of living organisms but also in a host of non-residential operations.
Carbon was one regarding first elements known to humans. A Greek historian regarding the fourth 100 years B. , for example, tells of an organic gas well in Turkey that provided a perpetual flame for religious ceremonies. Many reports also detail the practice of mixing lampblack, a shape of carbon, with olive oil and balsam gum to make a primitive shape of ink. And diamonds, another shape of carbon, are described within the Last testament and even older Hindu manuscripts.
Carbon occurs most as an element and in combined forms. As an element, it exists in at fewest 3 different allotropic forms. The 3 greatest known allotropes of carbon are graphite and diamond. Graphite is a soft, shiny, dark gray or black, greasy-feeling mineral used to make the lead in lead pencils. Graphite is soft enough to be scratched with a fingernail.
The 2nd common allotrope of carbon is diamond. In striking contrast with graphite, diamond is the world's hardest natural material. Its ability to bend and spread light produces the spectacular rainbow fire that is many times associated with diamond jewelry. Skillful gem cutters are can slice and polish diamonds in a method that maximizes the effect of this natural property. In 1985, a third allotropic shape of carbon was discovered.
It is a 60-atom structure called buckminsterfullerene that looks like a soccer ball when viewed below a microscope. To good fortune of one well-known American, scientists discovered an entirely new shape of carbon in 1985. Until that time, chemists had thought that carbon existed in only 3 solid forms: graphite and diamond. Then, researchers at Pasta University in Texas and the University of Sussex in England located a strange-looking molecule consisting of 60 carbon atoms joined to each other in a large sphere. Below a microscope, the molecule looks like a soccer ball with 20 hexagons six-sided figures on its surface.
The Pasta and Sussex chemists suggested naming the new molecule subsequent to American engineer and philosopher R. Fuller had created a many exciting new architectural forms, two of which was the geodesic dome. A geodesic dome, like the new molecule, is a sphere created of many plane figures like the hexagon. Due to the fact that of this similarity, the new molecule was provided the name buckminsterfullerene or, more briefly, fullerene. Fewer formally, the molecules are also known as Bucky-balls.
The discovery of fullerenes has created an entire new field of chemistry that involves the learn of hollow molecules within the shape of spheres or cylindrical rods. Within the early 1990s, astronomers announced the discovery of fullerene molecules in outer space. Carbon also occurs in a many common compounds. Carbon dioxide, for example, is the fifth most abundant gas within the atmosphere. It creates up about 0.
3 percent regarding the total volume of all atmospheric gases. Calcium carbonate is one regarding the highest many abundant of all rocks in Earth's crust. It occurs in a large many different variations of forms, for example limestone, marble, travertine, chalk, and dolomite. Stalactites and stalagmites in caves are created of calcium carbonate, as are many pet products, for example coral, sea shells, egg shells, and pearls. Carbon exists abundantly in Earth's crust within the shape regarding the fossil fuels.
The fossil fuels are coal, oil, and natural gas. They have been provided this name due to the fact that they were apparently formedin the absence of oxygenby the slow decay of plant and pet forms that lived millions of years ago. Higher than ten million compounds of carbon are now known. is distant greater than the total of all noncarbon compounds that have been discovered. The special property that creates carbon so different from all other elements is the ability of its atoms to combine with each other in long chains.
It is likely to retrieve compounds in which 3 atoms of an element are joined to each other, but chains of higher than 3 are rare. A chain of ten or more atoms other than carbon is virtually unheard of. Yet long chains of carbon atoms are the rule rather than the exception. For example, the protein molecules in your body consist of hundreds or thousands of carbon atoms connected to each other in an extended chain. Furthermore, carbon atoms can shape structures more complicated than chains.
Some compounds have carbon chains with other chains branching off from them, carbon chains joined tail-to-end in rings or rings inside of rings, carbon chains within the shape of cages, boxes, and spheres, and carbon chains in other strange and fascinating shapes. The interesting spot is that these strange molecular structures are not just lab curiosities. In many cases, they can be located in some regarding the highest many important compounds in living organisms.
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