Carbon-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 to form various shapes, including chains, pyramids, rings, sheets, and tubes. Carbon is truly a wonder element! 

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

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

GRAPHENE

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.

Next time: Conclusion of  Carbon-The Wonder Element

From the Awake! magazine