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Thursday, February 9, 2012

Old Man River’s Got Nothin’ on You Earth (2.1) formally titled Carbon

Carbon is in everything, well everything living.  Biological molecules like proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, nucleotides are all basically linked carbons adorned with other atoms. Carbon is so ubiquitous in living things that when biological molecules are drawn, carbons aren’t even shown – they’re implied.
The molecule to the left is glucose. Glucose has 6 carbons but only 1 is shown. Why? Because somebody decided a while back that there are just too many carbons out there to write them all down. The molecule to the right is a triglyceride. As you can see when, all of the carbons are drawn with a C it is quite overwhelming. (The implied carbons at the point of each line in the bottom triglyceride is such a cleaner look )
So why does this matter? Because there is a lot of carbon out there. Most of it is carbon 12 but some of it is carbon 14. However, the carbon 14 doesn’t stay carbon 14 for long (relatively) and that is why it matters. Over time the unstable carbon 14 changes to Nitrogen 14 and then the ratio of carbon 14 to nitrogen 14 reveals how long the thing with the carbon in it has been around.
More later.

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