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...Carbon | | ||
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Carbon fibre is light and strong. It's used to make parts of racing cars. |
| "I can be soft, I can be hard" Carbon exists in several different forms. It can be as soft as graphite pencil or as hard as diamonds depending on how the atoms of carbon are arranged. Both graphite and diamonds are made of carbon atoms only. |
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| "Bucky-balls!" Another form of carbon was discovered in 1985. It's called carbon-60, or buckyballs. The structure of a carbon-60 atom is very similar to the structure of a football. |
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Without carbon, there would be no life on earth. All living things contain carbon. Plants make their food from carbon dioxide and water. Animals eat carbohydrates to give them energy. Carbohydrates contain carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. |
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chemical symbol for carbon is C . |
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atomic number for carbon is 6. |
| Graphite,
diamonds and buckyballs are all made from carbon atoms only. They each
have very different properties because the carbon atoms are arranged differently. |
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single molecule of carbon-60 is one thousand million times smaller than
a football. |
| Photosythnesis
is the process by which plants extract carbon from the atmosphere and
convert it into food. During photosynthesis, carbon dioxide reacts with
water to form carbohydrates and oxygen. Transpiration is the process by which plants lose water, mainly from their leaves. Respiration is the process by which animals break down carbohydrates into carbon dioxide and water. So you could say, respiration is the reverse of photsynthesis. |
| Bread,
petrol and plastic bags, all contain carbon. Bread is largely made up
of carbohydrates. All carbohydrates contain carbon (that's what the "carbo"
stands for). Petrol is a hydrocarbon. Hydrocarbons are made of hydrogen ('hydro') and carbon atoms only. Plastic bags are made of polythene. Polythene is a hydrocarbon. It consists of a long chain of carbon atoms, with hydrogen atoms attached. |
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