Atomic Properties of C
- Atomic Number of C
- 6
- Atomic Mass of C
- 12.0110 u
- Electron Configuration
- [He] 2s2 2p2
- Electronegativity
- 2.55
- Block
- p-block
- Group
- 14
- Period
- 2
Place a diamond beside the gray streak from a pencil, and Carbon has already played its first trick: both are made of the same element.
In diamond, every carbon atom is locked into a rigid three-dimensional network. In graphite, the atoms form stacked sheets that slide past one another. One can scratch glass; the other leaves a line across your lab notes. The atoms did not change. Their arrangement did.
Carbon is unusually good at connecting. It can form four covalent bonds and strong bonds with other carbon atoms, allowing it to build chains, branches, rings, cages, and sheets only one atom thick. Sugars, fats, proteins, DNA, plastics, fuels, and graphene are all different structures made possible by the same talent.
Carbon is no minor character inside you. It accounts for roughly 18% of the human body by mass and forms the framework of every cell. Plants capture carbon dioxide from the air, organisms pass carbon through food webs, and oceans and rocks carry it through a planetary cycle.
One form of carbon even keeps time. After an organism dies, its carbon-14 slowly decays with a half-life of about 5,730 years. By measuring what remains, scientists can date once-living material from thousands of years ago: ancient wood and cloth, yes; dinosaur fossils, no.
Carbon’s real gift is reinvention. It shows that chemistry depends not only on which atoms are present, but on how they connect.