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.
In "Energy Story" uses an explanation of atoms and tells us the parts of an atom and its structure. In the text it
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.
Every minute and day our world in radical changes to see new things on the way of discoveries of to makes the life easy. It is true to focus on today science the way of the real-life more sophisticated by each element of the periodic table the open secret. We incredible material variety, as we know everything the stare, the planet, and life itself. According to the PBS NOVA I was watching the amazing documentary film that is written, produced and directed by Chris Schmidt, but presented by the host David Pogue. David say’s a lot of things on his almost two hours (1:53) film about the “Hunting the Elements.” With the main points or concepts like the elements, compounds, atoms, periodic table, noble gases,
An atom, by definition, is the smallest part of any substance. The atom has three main components that make it up: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons and neutrons are within the nucleus in the center of the atom. The electrons revolve around the nucleus in many orbitals. These orbitals consist of many different shapes, including circular, spiral, and many others.
In 1803 this theory was finalised and stated that (1) all matter is made up of the smallest possible particles termed atoms, (2) atoms of a given element have unique characteristics and weight, and (3) three types of atoms exist: simple (elements), compound (simple molecules), and complex (complex molecules).
Every chemical element or compound have specific properties that make them different than the other. However, these properties help us to understand every element or compound in which they can be used and how we can deal with them. These properties can be chemical properties which are defined as "that property must lead to a change in the substances ' chemical structure", such as heat of combustion and flammability ("Physical and Chemical…"). Also, these properties can be physical properties which are defined as the properties "that can be measured or observed without changing the chemical nature of the substance", such as mass, volume, boiling and freezing points ("Physical and Chemical…"). These two properties are related to each other. For
The theory of quantum mechanics has divided the atom into a number of fundamental sub-atomic particles. Although the physicist has shown that the atom is not a solid indivisible object, he has not been able to find a particle which does possess those qualities. Talk of particles, though, is misleading because the word suggests a material object. This is not the intention for the use of the word in quantum physics. Quantum particles are, instead, representations of the actions and reactions of forces at the sub-atomic level. In fact, physicists are less concerned with the search for a material particle underlying all physical objects and more interested in explaining how nature works. Quantum theory is the means that enables the physicist to express those explanations in a scientific way.
Alpha radiation/emission - Alpha particles are the nuclei of a Helium atom 42He. Consisting of two protons and two neutrons, positively charged.
Cells are composed primarily of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen, the elements that make up the majority of organic compounds. The most important organic compounds in a cell are proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, and polysaccharides (carbohydrates). The "solid" structures of the cell are co...
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.
about the nucleus of its parent atom and (2) its rotation about its own axis.
Matter is defined as anything that occupies space and can be perceived by one or more senses; a physical body, a physical substance, or the universe as a whole. There are four distinct states of matter: solids, liquids, gases, and plasma. There are other states of matter such as Bose-Einstein condesates and neutron degenerate matter, but those states can only be found under extreme conditions.
Carbon Carbon is one of the basic elements of matter (Bush 1230-1231). The name carbon comes from the Latin word "carbo" meaning charcoal. Carbon is the sixth most abundant element (Gangson). More than 1,000,000 compounds are made from carbon (Carbon (C)). "The Element Carbon is defined as a naturally abundant non-metallic element that occurs in many inorganic and in all organic compounds, exists freely as graphite and diamond and as a constituent of coal, limestone, and petroleum, and is capable of chemical self-bonding to form an enormous number of chemically, biologically, and commercially important molecules.
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.
Most elementscrystalize as metals. Some solids can also be frozen liquids. The atoms in a solid are tightly bonded which means it has a definiteshape. The second phase of matter is liquids.