9.1 Carbon Compounds

Until 1828, chemists divided compounds into compounds that chemists could produce and compounds that only organisms could produce. The compounds produced by organisms were called organic compounds. In 1828, a German chemist, Friedrich Wöhler, mixed silver cyanate, AgOCN, with ammonium chloride, NH₄Cl. He expected to make ammonium cyanate. Instead, he produced urea, (NH₂)₂CO, which is a product of reactions that occur in the livers of many organisms. Wöhler had synthesized an organic compound.

An organic compound contains carbon and hydrogen, often combined with a few other elements, such as oxygen and nitrogen. There are millions of organic compounds—more than 90 percent of all known compounds. Remember that carbon has four valence electrons. So, a carbon atom can form four single covalent bonds, or a double bond and two single bonds, or a triple bond and a single bond. Most of the bonds in organic compounds are carbon-to-carbon bonds or carbon-to-hydrogen bonds.

Figure 1 A whale's survival depends on carbon compounds. Carbon compounds form the structures of a whale's cells and control reactions that take place in those cells. The instructions for these processes are stored in organic compounds.

Table of Contents