CHEMISTRY OF CARBON                                  [home]

Carbon forms the basis of life and, for a long time, carbon chemistry has been known as "organic chemistry".

Carbon is a non-metal and forms four covalent bonds. This is possible as there are four outer electrons. Molecules then form based on carbon-carbon bonding.

Very often carbon bonds with hydrogen. This happens so frequently that chemists often draw the molecular structure in what is known as a stick or skeleton diagram ignoring the hydrogen altogether. Here, at each bend in the lines, it is understood that a carbon atom exists and if no other lines ( covalent bonds ) are shown, it is assumed that hydrogen atoms exist to make up the necessary four.

Other atoms are shown as letters. In morphine these are a nitrogen atom (in a carbon loop) and three oxygen atoms. ALL other atoms are either hydrogen or carbon.

Molecules with carbon-carbon bonds are not really flat. Most covalent bonds have weird and wonderful angles associated with them. Carbon's bonding angles form a tetrahedron in 3-D space. That means that the molecules that are formed make strange structures that can be walked around. An animation exists on the "Opiates" page where the structure of morphine is shown from many angles.

The reason for these strange shapes lie in the best description of atoms that we have - Quantum Mechanics. This is a fantastic theory which replaces Newtonian Mechanics when you get to atom size. Electrons in this model, do not orbit the central nucleus like a planet around the Sun, but act rather like the surface of a beaten drum, wobbling into different directions and making patterns. The tetrahedral shape is the wobble pattern for this particular set of electrons.

Quantum Mechanics is now an old theory - it has been developed for 70 years and it is spectacularly successful. The trouble is, while the maths, though hard, is accessible with computers and through calculus, no one really understands quantum theory. Very recently, physicists and mathematicians have been linking it to the theory of prime numbers and also to the theory of communication, which is intimately linked to computer logic.

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