September 10, 2016 Saturday
Bedtime Story
Carbon's catenation was the game changer
In my bed-time story dated September 6, I had explained how the carbon atom is endowed with an extraordinary power.
This power goes by the name of catenation which is the ability of the atoms of the same element to link themselves together to form long chains.
This ability to catenate depends on the bond energy (nature is parsimonious and uses path of least resistance or energy).
This bond energy in turn is explained by quantum mechanics, specifically by the azimuthal quantum number that determines the orbital angular momentum and its shape.
I shall not go into the details of it.
Suffice to say that at the bottom of chemistry lies quantum mechanics.
This catenation allows carbon to form a staggering array of large molecules and compounds; so much so that more compounds have carbon in them than not.
Over this, if carbon chains get linked with hydrogen atoms, they form another large family of organic compounds called hydrocarbons.
The simplest of them being the alkane methane CH4.
These hydrocarbons are the drivers of post industrialized modern economies and the chief source of major wars among nations, specially the big and powerful ones.
Once these hydrocarbons add oxygen to themselves, a myriad of biological molecules arise, namely:
Sugars, fats, alcohols
Chitin (polymer of N-acetylglucosamine) which forms exoskeleton of arthropods, cell walls of fungi, scales of fishes etc.
Carotenoids which form pigments such as chloroplasts, chromoplasts (fruits and flowers) in plants, in the macula of our eye as lutein, astaxantin and zeaxantin and so on.
Lignans are found in plants.
Esters which are distinguished by their characteristic fruity odor form glycerides in our body and make bulk of animal fat and vegetable oil.
Adding nitrogen to carbon, hydrogen and oxygen potpourri gives you alkaloids, very widespread in living kingdom.
With the addition of phosphorus you end up with the 3 magical molecules that have the power to breathe life into chemistry:
DNA, RNA and ATP.
We, and all the life around us, is simply organized chemistry honed and chiselled out over 4 billion years of trial and error.
From the creation of this planet out of the molecular cloud, it took just 500 million years (0.5 billion or 500,000,000 years) for the first elementary living molecules to arise from chemistry.
Thanks to carbon.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami any my fellow cousin ape.
Bedtime Story
Carbon's catenation was the game changer
In my bed-time story dated September 6, I had explained how the carbon atom is endowed with an extraordinary power.
This power goes by the name of catenation which is the ability of the atoms of the same element to link themselves together to form long chains.
This ability to catenate depends on the bond energy (nature is parsimonious and uses path of least resistance or energy).
This bond energy in turn is explained by quantum mechanics, specifically by the azimuthal quantum number that determines the orbital angular momentum and its shape.
I shall not go into the details of it.
Suffice to say that at the bottom of chemistry lies quantum mechanics.
This catenation allows carbon to form a staggering array of large molecules and compounds; so much so that more compounds have carbon in them than not.
Over this, if carbon chains get linked with hydrogen atoms, they form another large family of organic compounds called hydrocarbons.
The simplest of them being the alkane methane CH4.
These hydrocarbons are the drivers of post industrialized modern economies and the chief source of major wars among nations, specially the big and powerful ones.
Once these hydrocarbons add oxygen to themselves, a myriad of biological molecules arise, namely:
Sugars, fats, alcohols
Chitin (polymer of N-acetylglucosamine) which forms exoskeleton of arthropods, cell walls of fungi, scales of fishes etc.
Carotenoids which form pigments such as chloroplasts, chromoplasts (fruits and flowers) in plants, in the macula of our eye as lutein, astaxantin and zeaxantin and so on.
Lignans are found in plants.
Esters which are distinguished by their characteristic fruity odor form glycerides in our body and make bulk of animal fat and vegetable oil.
Adding nitrogen to carbon, hydrogen and oxygen potpourri gives you alkaloids, very widespread in living kingdom.
With the addition of phosphorus you end up with the 3 magical molecules that have the power to breathe life into chemistry:
DNA, RNA and ATP.
We, and all the life around us, is simply organized chemistry honed and chiselled out over 4 billion years of trial and error.
From the creation of this planet out of the molecular cloud, it took just 500 million years (0.5 billion or 500,000,000 years) for the first elementary living molecules to arise from chemistry.
Thanks to carbon.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami any my fellow cousin ape.
This alkaloid phenyl ethyl amine is the precursor to several key molecules like tyrosine, dopamine, adrenaline, noradrenaline, the key molecules that drive us
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