Page 31 - Miracles Within the Molecule

he book you are hold ing in your
hand, your hand itself and your
fin ger nails, your tel e vi sion and
fur ni ture, the chair you are sit ting on, the floor ing
beneath it, the lamp that you read by, and the water
you drink—all these are sub stan ces with entire ly dif fer -
ent prop er ties. Since they are all made up of atoms, how is it that
they can pos sess such total ly dif fer ent fea tures and appear an ces? The
answer lies in mol e cu les. Combinations of atoms of the rough ly 109 or
so dif fer ent ele ments of in exis tence, in dif fer ent num bers and forms,
give rise to this mar vel ous vari e ty.
The vari e ty occa sioned by just 109 types of atoms form ing var i ous
com pounds is truly extraor di na ry. Every sub stance that forms has one
or more dif fer ent uses, and many of them are of vital impor tance for life.
Consider: How many dif fer ent com bi na tions can you make with 109
com po nents? Many, but in addi tion, can you ensure that all of them are
func tion al? The num ber you can give is of course far less. Yet through
an aston ish ing cre a tion, these 109 dif fer ent atoms give rise not only to
an infi nite vari e ty of com pounds, but also to such sen sa tions as taste,
smell, color, hard ness, soft ness, vis cos i ty and vol a til i ty. Not only does
this mag nif i cent vari e ty pro vide count less beau ties and art ist ry, it is also
nec es sa ry for organ isms to sur vive. For exam ple, the fact that water can
assume three states—vapor, liq uid, and solid—con sti tute one of the fun -
da men tal pre req ui sites for life on Earth. (This point will be exam ined in
great er detail later.)
How can these 109 atoms pro duce lit er al ly bil lions of dif fer ent
types of mol e cu les? Here the impor tance of elec trons becomes appar ent.
In order for a mol e cule to form, elec trons are either trans mit ted from
one atom to anoth er, or are used in com mon by two atoms. In this way,
a mol e cule con sist ing of at least two atoms emer ges. This proc ess is of
course far too com plex to be fully explained in a sin gle par a graph. The

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