Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Carbon is most commonly used in its amorphous form. In this form, carbon is used for steelmaking, as carbon black, as a filling in tires, in respirators, and as activated charcoal. Carbon is also used in the form of graphite, for example as the lead in pencils. Diamond, another form of carbon, is commonly used in jewelry. [18]
In general bonds of carbon with other elements are covalent bonds. Carbon is tetravalent but carbon free radicals and carbenes occur as short-lived intermediates. Ions of carbon are carbocations and carbanions are also short-lived. An important carbon property is catenation as the ability to form long carbon chains and rings. [3]
Carbon is one of the few elements that can form long chains of its own atoms, a property called catenation.This coupled with the strength of the carbon–carbon bond gives rise to an enormous number of molecular forms, many of which are important structural elements of life, so carbon compounds have their own field of study: organic chemistry.
When combined with oxygen and hydrogen, carbon can form many groups of important biological compounds including sugars, lignans, chitins, alcohols, fats, aromatic esters, carotenoids and terpenes. With nitrogen, it forms alkaloids , and with the addition of sulfur also it forms antibiotics, amino acids , and rubber products.
A carbon–oxygen bond is a polar covalent bond between atoms of carbon and oxygen. [1] [2] [3]: 16–22 Carbon–oxygen bonds are found in many inorganic compounds such as carbon oxides and oxohalides, carbonates and metal carbonyls, [4] and in organic compounds such as alcohols, ethers, and carbonyl compounds.
A nonane molecule, consisting of nine carbon atoms in a chain with 20 hydrogen atoms surrounding it. In chemistry, catenation is the bonding of atoms of the same element into a series, called a chain. [1] A chain or a ring may be open if its ends are not bonded to each other (an open-chain compound), or closed if they are bonded in a ring (a ...
Carbon's widespread abundance, its ability to form stable bonds with numerous other elements, and its unusual ability to form polymers at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth enables it to serve as a common element of all known living organisms. In a 2018 study, carbon was found to compose approximately 550 billion tons of all life on ...
For example, carbon-containing compounds such as alkanes (e.g. methane CH 4) and its derivatives are universally considered organic, but many others are sometimes considered inorganic, such as halides of carbon without carbon-hydrogen and carbon-carbon bonds (e.g. carbon tetrachloride CCl 4), and certain compounds of carbon with nitrogen and ...