that is why carbon is a tramp: crash course biology #1

Carbon is also, as I mentioned before, a bit of a tramp, because it needs four extra electrons, and so it'll bond with pretty much whoever happens to be nearby. And also, because it needs four electrons, it'll bond with two or three or even four of those things at the same time.

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Why is carbon a tramp?

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How many electrons does carbon have?

Carbon, on its own, is an atom with six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons. Atoms have electron shells, and they need to have these shells filled in order to be happy fulfilled atoms. So carbon has six total electrons, two for the first shell, so it's totally happy, and four of the eight it needs to fill the second shell.#N#Carbon forms a type of bond that we call “covalent”. This is when atoms actually are sharing electrons with each other. So in the case of methane, which is pretty much the simplest carbon compound ever, carbon is sharing its four electrons in its outer electron shell with four atoms of hydrogen. Hydrogen atoms only have one electron, so they want their first "s orbital" filled. Carbon shares its four electrons with those four hydrogens, and those four hydrogens each share one electron with carbon, so everybody’s happy. In chemistry and biology, this is often represented by what we call “Lewis dot structures”.

How do Lewis dot structures work?

In biology, most compounds can be displayed in Lewis dot structure form, and here's how that works. These structures basically show how atoms bond together to make up molecules. And one of the rules of thumb when making these diagrams is that the elements that we're working with here react with one other in such a way that each atom ends up with eight electrons in its outermost shell. That is called the octet rule, cause atoms want to complete their octets of electrons to be happy and satisfied.#N#Oxygen has six electrons in its octet, and needs two, which is why we get H 2 O. It can also bond with carbon, which needs four, so you get two double bonds to two different oxygen atoms, you end up with CO 2, that pesky global warming gas and also the stuff that makes all life on Earth possible.#N#Nitrogen has five electrons in its outer shell. Here’s how we count them. There are four placeholders. Each of them wants two atoms. And, like people getting on a bus, they prefer to start out not sitting next to each other. I’m not kidding about this, they really don’t double up until they have to. So for maximum happiness, nitrogen bonds with three hydrogens, forming ammonia. Or with two hydrogens, sticking off another group of atoms, which we call an amino group. And if that amino group is bonded to a carbon that is bonded to a carboxylic acid group, then you have an amino acid! You've heard of those, right?

What is nitrogen bonded to?

And if that amino group is bonded to a carbon that is bonded to a carboxylic acid group, then you have an amino acid!

Do atoms have a charge?

And that's when, instead of sharing electrons, atoms just completely, whole-heartedly, donate or accept an electron from another atom and then live happily as a charged atom. (And there actually is no such thing as a "charged atom"—if an atom has a charge, it's an ion.) Atoms, in general, prefer to be neutral.

Is ionic bond stronger than covalent bond?

Sometimes ionic bonds are stronger than covalent bonds, though that's generally not the case, and the strength of covalent bonds varies wildly. How these bonds are made and broken is intensely important to life, and to our lives. Making and breaking bonds is, in fact, the key to life itself.

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