The Chemistry of Carbon

Five parts on the element that accounts for most of the compounds there are. It opens on why that should be true of one ordinary element in the middle of the second row: carbon has four outer electrons so it forms four bonds, and a bond between two carbon atoms is unusually strong, so chains can run on indefinitely, branch, and close into rings. Neither fact is remarkable alone; together they make the arrangement matter as much as the ingredients, which is why five carbons and twelve hydrogens give three different substances. The second part meets those chains in the quantity the world uses them, where separating crude oil by boiling point separates it by chain length — and chain length decides whether something fuels a car, a ship, or surfaces a road. The third is the process invented because the ground supplies the wrong proportions: long molecules broken into short ones, with an alkene forced out as a by-product because there is not enough hydrogen for two saturated fragments. The fourth takes the two families side by side, where one bond decides whether bromine water keeps its colour. And the last uses that same double bond on another alkene instead of on bromine, which is every plastic ever made — and the reason none of them rot.