Chapter 4
The Chemical Basis of Life
Introduction
• Your body is an elaborate chemical system.
• Chemical signals between brain less enable your mind to understand what you see.
• You nourish those cells with chemicals that are obtained from food.
• Life is all about chemicals and how they interact
Concept 4.1
Life requires about 25 chemical elements
Elements
• Humans and other organisms are examples of matter.
Matter: Anything that occupies space and has mass. (Physical things)
• The various forms of matter are composed of one or more chemical elements.
Element: A pure substance that cannot be broken down into smaller substances by chemical means
• There are 25 elements are essential to life. Four of these elements are Oxygen (O), Carbon (C), Hydrogen (H), and Nitrogen (N). These make up about 96% of the living matter in your body. Calcium (CA), Phosphorus (P), Potassium (K), sulfur (S), and a few other elements account for most of the remaining 4%.
Trace Elements: elements that make up less that 0.01 percent of your body mass are nevertheless critical to your health.
Compounds
• Most elements can interact with other elements forming complex types of matter called compounds.
Compound: A substance containing two or more elements that are chemically combined in a fixed ratio.
• Compounds properties may differ greatly from those of its components.
• Though simple compounds like sodium chloride and water play important roles in living things, most compounds found in organisms are more complex, containing at least three or four elements.
Concept 4.2
Chemical properties are based on the structure of atoms.
• Different elements have different properties.
• Some are solid metal at room temperature, some are invisible gases, some elements readily react with other elements, whiles others hardly react at all.
• These properties affect the roles that different elements play in biological processes. This section describes how an elements properties to its structure.
Atoms
• Each element consists of a single kind of atom that is different from the atoms of all other elements.
• Atom- gets its name from the Greek word atomos, meaning “indivisible” is the smallest possible “Pierce”—it would take more than tree million carbon atoms to stretch across the period printed at the end of this sentence.
• Atoms are all elements are made up of even smaller components called subatomic particles.
Proton: Is a subatomic particle with a single unit of positive electrical charge.
Electron: is a subatomic particle with a unit of negative charge.
Neutron: is electrically neutral.
Nucleus: is the center of an atom. It is made up of tightly packed protons and neutrons.
• Electrons, which have much less mass than neutrons and protons continually, move about the outside of the nucleus at great speed.
A chemical is a substance used in a chemical process.Everything that has mass is a chemical.Anything that is matter is a chemical. Filtration is the process of separating solid particles from fluids.To evaporate is to change from a solid or liquid to vapor.Alcohol is soluble in water.However, oil is insoluble in water.
One of nature's greatest possessions, is life, and every part of life depends on molecules. Four common molecules are Carbohydrates, Proteins, Lipids and Nucleic Acids. Within these molecules contains part, or all, of the four major elements, Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen, (C.H.O.N). It is an essential part of life to have these molecules or their would be no living creatures. Molecules, Atoms, and elements are all apart of the body and every creature needs them.
2 Elements are substances that cannot be broken down further into simpler substances by chemical means. There are currently 103 known elements from which all matter that exists is made. And they each have their own atomic number based ...
The salts used made up of chemical compounds. All chemical compounds are made up of either molecular or ionic compounds. Molecular compounds are the combination of nonmetallic elements, while ionic compounds are made of the reaction of metals and nonmetals. The salts were made up of one metal, and at least one non-metal (Brady, Russell,Holum, 2000). For example, look at the salt ClCu2. The element copper (Cu) is a metal while Chloride (Cl) is a non-metal.
- There are 92 naturally occurring elements, only 17 of them make up 99.5% of
One of the few properties which is connected to nucleons is radioactivity, which is caused by an imbalance of protons and neutrons. This means that there is not enough binding energy to hold the nucleus together and it spontaneously looses mass in the form of radiation. Another property related to the nucleus is density, which is almost directly related to the atomic mass.
I hope I have educated you and answered some questions. I have written as much information as I could find on these life crucial elements. These elements are very important and crucial to our life.
Tin was the first man made element. Malaysia and South Africa are the main exporter to USA market. Electro microscopes, one of the best technology of our world that to know each small amount of atoms easily with 10.000 times of atoms images, Periodic table is one of the source of element of the 118 elements with their symbol and protons and electrons numbers. In the periodic table more than 70 elements are metallic. One of the hunting of the elements film secrets was made, you to get more understanding of correlation between the elements and life. To be sure, chemistry of life, rare earth elements, and radioactivity are the main components of the real life. Carbon (C), Hydrogen (H), Nitrogen (N), Oxygen (O), Phosphorus (P), and Sulfur (S) area the six elements of life, CHNOPS are also the basic elements of all living things. Phosphorus is the first element isolated from living
The idea of the atom started all the way back from the ancient Greece. What is sad about this is that one philosopher’s idea it was rejected by the rest of the philosophers of the time. Philosophers like Aristotle. The ancient Greeks did not have all the modern technology we have now and were not equipped to test their atomic theory. The theory they had hypothesized was if you keep dividing something, the smallest living thing had to be an atom.
Alpha radiation/emission - Alpha particles are the nuclei of a Helium atom 42He. Consisting of two protons and two neutrons, positively charged.
about the nucleus of its parent atom and (2) its rotation about its own axis.
The Periodic Table is based around the Atomic Theory. Firstly people believed that everything was made up the four elements Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water. This theory evolved into everything being made up of atoms. Breakthroughs throughout history such as the discoveries of the nucleus, protons, neutrons and electrons have pushed this theory forward to where it is today.
The Periodic Table of Elements is commonly used today when studying elements. This table’s history begins in ancient times when Greek scientists first started discovering different elements. Over the years, many different forms of the periodic table have been made which set the basis for the modern table we use today. This table includes over 100 elements and are arranged by groups and periods. Groups being vertical columns and periods being horizontal columns. With all of the research conducted over the years and the organization of this table, it is easy to use when needed.
In chemistry, metals compose a great number of the periodic table elements. Each metal has its own characteristic mass,