Page 68 - Miracles Within the Molecule
P. 68
HArun yahya
It is pres ent ly cal cu lat ed that in the world, there are sev er al mil lion
dif fer ent com pounds, brought togeth er in dif fer ent ways. They may
con sist of only two atoms com bin ing togeth er, or else of chains and
struc tures of mil lions. Interestingly, how e ver, each ele ment has the
prop er ty of giv ing rise to its own unique com pound. Some ele ments
never com bine with oth ers; oth ers give rise to only one or two com -
pounds. Yet the ele ment car bon is total ly dif fer ent, in that all by itself, it
is able to com bine in more than a mil lion dif fer ent kinds of com pounds.
Bearing in mind that the total num ber of com pounds on Earth is 2 mil -
lion, you can see that the other ele ments apart from car bon give rise to
a total of only 300,000 com pounds.
When you mix anoth er color with white, the result is always a com -
plete ly new shade. When you add a third color, the vari e ty of pos si ble
col ors rises still fur ther. Some col ors, how e ver, pro duce new col ors only
when added to spe cif ic ones. And black swal lows up what ev er color
you mix with it. Apart from a few excep tion al cases, you can not obtain
a new color from black. In chem i cal terms, car bon rath er resem bles the
sta tus of white. It can form com pounds with just about every other atom
or mol e cule in nature and give rise to new sub stan ces of the great est
impor tance to life. This means that car bon is a great mar vel of cre a tion.
Particularly inter est ing is the fact that this vital ly impor tant ele -
ment exists in rel a tive ly small quan ti ties. By weight, car bon com pris es
only 9 to 10 per cent of the com po si tion of all liv ing things, and only
0.017 per cent of the com po si tion of the Earth. 22 Despite its small quan -
ti ties, how e ver, car bon is present in every part of your life, includ ing in
your own body, and can not be replaced by any other ele ment.
The way that car bon can eas i ly com bine with other ele ments stems
from the bonds it estab lish es with them. By means of its molec u lar prop -
er ties, car bon can add the same kinds of atoms to one anoth er and also
com bin ing dif fer ent types of atoms as well. Most atoms gen er al ly can
estab lish bonds only with par tic u lar other ele ments and not oth ers. But
car bon also estab lish es very strong cova lent bonds with other car bon
atoms. Since these bonds are so very sound and strong, they afford the
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