Carbon
hideCarbon (pronounced /ˈkɑrbən/) is the chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6. As a member of group 14 on the periodic table, it is nonmetallic and tetravalent—making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. There are three naturally occurring isotopes, with 12C and 13C being stable, while 14C is radioactive, decaying with a half-life of about 5730 years. Carbon is one of the few elements known since antiquity. The name "carbon" comes from Latin language carbo, coal, and, in some Romance and Slavic languages, the word carbon can refer both to the element and to coal.
There are several allotropes of carbon of which the best known are graphite, diamond, and amorphous carbon. The physical properties of carbon vary widely with the allotropic form. For example, diamond is highly transparent, while graphite is opaque and black. Diamond is among the hardest materials known, while graphite is soft enough to form a streak on paper (hence its name, from the Greek word "to write"). Diamond has a very low electrical conductivity, while graphite is a very good conductor. Under normal conditions, diamond has the highest thermal conductivity of all known materials. All the allotropic forms are solids under normal conditions but graphite is the most thermodynamically stable.
All forms of carbon are highly stable, requiring high temperature to react even with oxygen. The most common oxidation state of carbon in inorganic compounds is +4, while +2 is found in carbon monoxide and other transition metal carbonyl complexes. The largest sources of inorganic carbon are limestones, dolomites and carbon dioxide, but significant quantities occur in organic deposits of coal, peat, oil and methane clathrates. Carbon forms more compounds than any other element, with almost ten million pure organic compounds described to date, which in turn are a tiny fraction of such compounds that are theoretically possible under standard conditions.
Carbon is one of the least abundant elements in the Earth's crust, but the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. It is present in all known lifeforms, and in the human body carbon is the second most abundant element by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen. This abundance, together with the unique diversity of organic compounds and their unusual polymer-forming ability at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth, make this element the chemical basis of all known life.
For more information about Carbon, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
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News tagged with carbon atoms
Researchers make key step towards turning methane gas into liquid fuel
Oct 22, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the University of Washington and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have taken an important step in converting methane gas to a liquid, potentially making it more useful as a fuel ...
Physicist wins Packard Fellowship
Oct 16, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- MIT physicist Pablo Jarillo-Herrero has won a 2009 David and Lucile Packard Fellowship, an award he will use to study a new class of materials that could have applications in the semiconductor ...
Physicists discover novel electronic properties in two-dimensional carbon structure
Oct 14, 2009 |
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Rutgers researchers have discovered novel electronic properties in two-dimensional sheets of carbon atoms called graphene that could one day be the heart of speedy and powerful electronic devices.
How Perfect Can Graphene Be?
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
Oct 13, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists have investigated the purest graphene to date, and have found that the material possesses unprecedented high electronic quality. The discovery has raised the bar for this relatively ...
Graphite mimics iron's magnetism
Oct 04, 2009 |
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Researchers of Eindhoven University of Technology and the Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands show for the first time why ordinary graphite is a permanent magnet at room temperature. The results ...
Researchers reveal key to how bacteria clear mercury pollution
Oct 01, 2009 |
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Mercury pollution is a persistent problem in the environment. Human activity has lead to increasingly large accumulations of the toxic chemical, especially in waterways, where fish and shellfish tend to act as sponges for ...
Novel Chemistry for Ethylene and Tin
Sep 29, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- New work by chemists at UC Davis shows that ethylene, a gas that is important both as a hormone that controls fruit ripening and as a raw material in industrial chemistry, can bind reversibly to tin atoms. ...
Cheap, sensitive sensors could detect explosives, toxins in water
Sep 24, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A sensitive new Stanford-developed disposable chip detects low concentrations of the explosive trinitrotoluene (TNT) and a close chemical cousin of the dreaded toxic nerve agent sarin in water ...
A flash of light turns graphene into a biosensor
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
Sep 23, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Biomedical researchers suspect graphene, a novel nanomaterial made of sheets of single carbon atoms, would be useful in a variety of applications. But no one had studied the interaction between ...
Diamonds May Be the Ultimate MRI Probe, Say Quantum Physicists
Sep 22, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Diamonds, it has long been said, are a girl's best friend. But a research team including a physicist from the National Institute of Standards and Technology has recently found that the gems ...
Graphene and gallium arsenide: Two perfect partners find each other
Sep 16, 2009 |
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It is the marriage of two top candidates for the electronics of the future, both excentric and extremely interesting: Graphene, one of the partners, is an extremely thin fellow and besides, very young.
Carbon nanoballs as data storage units
Sep 01, 2009 |
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Small, smaller, "nano" data storage! Interest is growing in the use of metallofullerenes - carbon “cages” with embedded metallic compounds - as materials for miniature data storage devices. Researchers at ...
Scientists Image the 'Anatomy' of a Molecule (w/ Video)
Aug 28, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- For the first time, IBM researchers in Zurich, Switzerland, have taken a 3D image of an individual molecule. Using an atomic force microscope, the researchers constructed a "force map" of ...
Michigan Tech Team Models Molecular Transistor
Aug 13, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Electronic gadgetry gets tinier and more powerful all the time, but at some point, the transistors and myriad other component parts will get so little they won't work. That's because when ...
With help of DNA, nanotubes may become a bigger force
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
Aug 04, 2009 |
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In his neatly ordered lab at DuPont, chemist Ming Zheng slides open a glass cabinet and removes a flask of soot that could have been swept from someone's fireplace.
