Basic Science #1 Carbon Chemistry

I hope to write a series of posts on basic science, retelling the most memorable lessons in my life.  Basic science is the a discipline that combines all areas of mathematics with physics, chemistry and biology on the most theoretical level.  Not necessarily any immediate applications.  But the beauty of basic science is that it is universal and basically the truth.
This first lesson was in my senior year in high school, introduction to organic chemistry.  In the two previous years of chemistry studies I basically knew about the periodic table of elements like hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and so on. Nothing was standing out as exciting or amazing.
Organic chemistry is basically the chemistry of carbon.  Carbon is the basic element in all of life.  It is in the backbone of sugars, proteins and fats.  What is special about carbon?  Carbon has 4 electrons in its outer shell, so it can share these equally with another element by creating a bond that is represented either as two dots or a line.

The interesting thing about carbon is the diversity of the compounds that it can be found in.  In this lesson we learned about two substances made of only carbon:  Diamond and graphite:
Diamond is the hardest substance and graphite is soft and powdery.  The memorable phrase was: "Vive la petite difference!"  (Doesn't sound as nice in English: long live the difference.)

You can see there are only carbons in these two substances.  In diamond each carbon is connected to four other carbons making perfect 60 degrees angles equally distanced in space.  This perfect crystal structure gives it the hard quality.
In graphite the angles are not all the same, there are flat layers of carbons attached in strong bonds, connected to layers above and below attached in much weaker bonds that cause this substance to be powdery.

This lesson is unforgettable.  It taught me the importance of geometry in studying chemistry and biology.  It clarified the stick and ball models used to describe and predict the structure and activity of molecules in nature and in life.