Question

Why is carbon such a good material for building diverse structures?

Answer 1

Carbon is very important atom as almost all drug molecules, fertilizers, agrochemicals, macromolecules have carbon in their structure.

Let’s see in short the importance of carbon in short.

Carbon – The Backbone of Biological Molecules

• Although cells are 70–95% water, the rest consists mostly of carbon-based compounds.
• Carbon is unparalleled in its ability to form large, complex, and diverse molecules.
• Carbon accounts for the diversity of biological molecules and has made possible the great diversity of living things.
• Proteins, DNA, carbohydrates, and other molecules that distinguish living matter from inorganic material are all composed of carbon atoms bonded to each other and to atoms of other elements.
• These other elements commonly include hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), nitrogen (N), sulfur (S), and phosphorus (P).

Organic chemistry is the study of carbon compounds

• The study of carbon compounds, organic chemistry, deals with any compound with carbon (organic compounds).
• Organic compounds can range from simple molecules, such as CO₂ or CH₄, to complex molecules such as proteins, which may weigh more than 100,000 daltons.
• The overall percentages of the major elements of life (C, H, O, N, S, and P) are quite uniform from one organism to another.
• However, because of carbon’s versatility, these few elements can be combined to build an inexhaustible variety of organic molecules.

Carbon atoms can form diverse molecules by bonding to four other atoms

• With a total of 6 electrons, a carbon atom has 2 in the first electron shell and 4 in the second shell.
• Carbon has little tendency to form ionic bonds by losing or gaining 4 electrons to complete its valence shell.
• Instead, carbon usually completes its valence shell by sharing electrons with other atoms in four covalent bonds.
• This tetravalence by carbon makes large, complex molecules possible.
• When carbon forms covalent bonds with four other atoms, they are arranged at the corners of an imaginary tetrahedron with bond angles of 109.5°.
• In molecules with multiple carbons, every carbon bonded to four other atoms has a tetrahedral shape.
• However, when two carbon atoms are joined by a double bond, all bonds around those carbons are in the same plane and have a flat, three-dimensional structure.
• The three-dimensional shape of an organic molecule determines its function.
• The electron configuration of carbon makes it capable of forming covalent bonds with many different elements.
• The valences of carbon and its partners can be viewed as the building code that governs the architecture of organic molecules.
• In carbon dioxide, one carbon atom forms two double bonds with two different oxygen atoms.
• In the structural formula, O=C=O, each line represents a pair of shared electrons. This arrangement completes the valence shells of all atoms in the molecule.
• While CO₂ can be classified as either organic or inorganic, its importance to the living world is clear.
• CO₂ is the source of carbon for all organic molecules found in organisms. It is usually fixed into organic molecules by the process of photosynthesis.
• Urea, CO(NH₂)₂, is another simple organic molecule in which each atom forms covalent bonds to complete its valence shell.