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Organic Chemistry: fun facts and quiz
The essentials in 7 ideas, with fun facts, an illustrated story and a quiz to see how much you know.
The essentials
Carbon, the Builder
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Carbon can form four bonds and long chains, so it builds the huge variety of molecules in living things.
Key fact
Diamond and pencil graphite are both pure carbon.
Hydrocarbons
Hydrocarbons are made of just hydrogen and carbon. Methane, the simplest, is natural gas; longer chains make petrol, diesel and wax.
Key fact
Methane is one carbon atom with four hydrogens: CH₄.
Molecules of Life
Living things are built from four big kinds of organic molecules: carbohydrates, fats, proteins and nucleic acids like DNA.
Key fact
Proteins are chains of building blocks called amino acids.
Sugars & Starch
Sugars and starches are carbohydrates, the body’s main fuel. Starch is just many sugar units linked in a chain; digestion breaks it back down.
Key fact
Chew bread long enough and it starts to taste sweet.
Medicines
Many medicines are organic molecules, some first found in plants. Aspirin is related to a chemical in willow bark, used against pain for thousands of years.
Key fact
Aspirin went on sale in 1899.
Smells & Flavours
Many smells come from small organic molecules called esters. They give fruits like bananas and pineapples their scent, and they’re copied in sweets.
Key fact
Isoamyl acetate smells strongly of bananas.
Life’s Chemistry in a Lab
People once thought organic chemicals could only come from living things. In 1828, Friedrich Wöhler made urea in a lab from non-living materials.
Key fact
Today chemists build complex organic molecules from scratch.
Fun facts
Chemists know of millions of carbon compounds, more than all the other elements’ compounds put together.
Candle wax is a hydrocarbon too. A candle actually burns the vapour of melted wax, not the solid wax.
Your hair and nails are made mostly of one protein, keratin, the same stuff as horns and hooves.
Cellulose, the stuff of wood and paper, is also a chain of sugar units, but humans can’t digest it.
Quinine, from the bark of the cinchona tree, fought malaria for centuries, and still gives tonic water its bitterness.
The earthy smell after rain comes partly from geosmin, which our noses can pick up in incredibly tiny amounts.
In 1856, 18-year-old William Perkin made mauve, the first synthetic dye, by accident. It became a Victorian fashion craze.
Story: The Football Molecule
The Football Molecule
1985. Chemists firing lasers at graphite find a strange new molecule, made of exactly 60 carbon atoms.
Its shape stumps them until they think of Buckminster Fuller’s domes: a hollow ball of hexagons and pentagons, like a football.
They name it buckminsterfullerene, or “buckyballs”. The discovery won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
True or false?
Tap your answer to see if you got it, and why.
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Question 1 of 10
Diamond and graphite are both made of carbon.
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True. Their atoms are just arranged differently.
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Question 2 of 10
Methane is a hydrocarbon.
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True. CH₄: carbon and hydrogen only.
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Question 3 of 10
Proteins are made from amino acids.
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True. Long chains of them, folded up.
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Question 4 of 10
Starch is made of many sugar units.
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True. Joined in long chains.
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Question 5 of 10
Aspirin is related to a chemical from willow bark.
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True. Salicin, used since ancient times.
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Question 6 of 10
Esters give many fruits their smell.
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True. Small molecules that evaporate easily.
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Question 7 of 10
Urea was made in a lab in 1828.
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True. By Friedrich Wöhler.
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Question 8 of 10
Organic chemistry only studies food labelled “organic”.
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False. It’s the chemistry of carbon compounds.
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Question 9 of 10
Hydrocarbons also contain oxygen.
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False. Only hydrogen and carbon.
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Question 10 of 10
DNA is a type of fat.
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False. It’s a nucleic acid.
Keep going in the app
KnowSoda learns what you know and brings back what you’re about to forget. Organic Chemistry has 6 more ideas at the Advanced and Expert levels.
Sources
- Royal Society of Chemistry — Organic chemistry and William Perkin
- Science History Institute — Friedrich Wöhler, Felix Hoffmann and aspirin
- OpenStax — Organic Chemistry
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — hydrocarbon, ester, carbohydrate
- Royal Society of Chemistry — Chirality; fractional distillation
- American Chemical Society — Discovery and development of penicillin
