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It is found in the gas state at room temperature and at normally-encountered concentrations it is odorless. As the source of carbon in the carbon cycle, atmospheric CO 2 is the primary carbon source for life on Earth. In the air, carbon dioxide is transparent to visible light but absorbs infrared radiation, acting as a greenhouse gas.
Liquid water is essential for carbon-based life. Chemical bonding of carbon molecules requires liquid water. [30] Water has the chemical property to make compound-solvent pairing. [31] Water provides the reversible hydration of carbon dioxide. Hydration of carbon dioxide is needed in carbon-based life. All life on Earth uses the same ...
Selenium, which is an essential element for animals and prokaryotes and is a beneficial element for many plants, is the least-common of all the elements essential to life. [3] [63] Selenium acts as the catalytic center of several antioxidant enzymes, such as glutathione peroxidase, [11] and plays a wide variety of other biological roles.
Carbon's abundance, its unique diversity of organic compounds, and its unusual ability to form polymers at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth, enables this element to serve as a common element of all known life. It is the second most abundant element in the human body by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen. [17]
Carbon compounds are defined as chemical substances containing carbon. [1] [2] More compounds of carbon exist than any other chemical element except for hydrogen. Organic carbon compounds are far more numerous than inorganic carbon compounds. In general bonds of carbon with other elements are covalent bonds.
Graphic representation of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. CHNOPS and CHON are mnemonic acronyms for the most common elements in living organisms. "CHON" stands for carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, which together make up more than 95 percent of the mass of biological systems. [1] "CHNOPS" adds phosphorus and ...
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Diamond is a solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Diamond as a form of carbon is tasteless, odourless, strong, brittle solid, colourless in pure form, a poor conductor of electricity, and insoluble in water.