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Carbon Cycle Research Paper

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Carbon is the most important element to living things because it can form many different kinds of bonds and form essential compounds.
All living things contain carbon in some form.Carbon is the primary component of macromolecules, including proteins, lipids, nucleic acids, and carbohydrates.Carbon's molecular structure allows it to bond in many different ways and with many different elements.The carbon cycle shows how carbon moves through the living and non-living parts of the environment.
Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe and is the building block of life on earth. On earth, carbon circulates through the land, ocean, and atmosphere, creating what is known as the Carbon Cycle. This global carbon cycle can be divided …show more content…

The animal has no need for the carbon dioxide and releases it into the atmosphere. A plant, on the other hand, uses the opposite reaction of an animal through photosynthesis. It intakes carbon dioxide, water, and energy from sunlight to make its own glucose and oxygen gas. The glucose is used for chemical energy, which the plant metabolizes in a similar way to an animal. The plant then emits the remaining oxygen into the …show more content…

The three forms of carbon found freely in nature are the amorphous, graphite, and diamond, and each form has vastly different properties.
Graphite is one of the softest known materials, while diamond is the hardest known material.
A fourth form, buckminsterfullerene, was only discovered a few years ago.
Carbon is one of the few elements whose existence has been known and used since ancient times.
It was named as an element by Antoine Lavoisier in 1789.
The Latin, English, French, German, Dutch, and Danish words for carbon all literally mean "coal substance."
All forms of carbon are solids under normal temperatures and pressure conditions.
Carbon is present in all known life forms.
It is the second most abundant element in humans (about 18% of mass) after oxygen.
Carbon is known to form around ten million different compounds.
It has the highest sublimation point of all elements at 3915 K (3642 °C, 6588 °F).
Carbon has two naturally occurring stale isotopes on Earth, one of which (carbon-12) accounts for 98% of the carbon found in nature.
There are fifteen known isotopes of

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