Radionuclide
A radionuclide is an atom that has excess nuclear energy, making it unstable. This excess energy can be used in one of three ways: emitted from the nucleus as gamma radiation. During those processes, the radionuclide is said to undergo radioactive decay; these emissions are considered ionizing radiation because they are powerful enough to liberate an electron from another atom. The radioactive decay can produce a stable nuclide or will sometimes produce a new unstable radionuclide which may undergo further decay. Radioactive decay is a random process at the level of single atoms: it is impossible to predict when one particular atom will decay. However, for a collection of atoms of a single element the decay rate, thus the half-life for that collection can be calculated from their measured decay constants; the range of the half-lives of radioactive atoms have no known limits and span a time range of over 55 orders of magnitude. Radionuclides occur or are artificially produced in nuclear reactors, particle accelerators or radionuclide generators.
There are about 730 radionuclides with half-lives longer than 60 minutes. Thirty-two of those are primordial radionuclides. At least another 60 radionuclides are detectable in nature, either as daughters of primordial radionuclides or as radionuclides produced through natural production on Earth by cosmic radiation. More than 2400 radionuclides have half-lives less than 60 minutes. Most of those are only produced artificially, have short half-lives. For comparison, there are about 253 stable nuclides. All chemical elements can exist as radionuclides; the lightest element, has a well-known radionuclide, tritium. Elements heavier than lead, the elements technetium and promethium, exist only as radionuclides. Unplanned exposure to radionuclides has a harmful effect on living organisms including humans, although low levels of exposure occur without harm; the degree of harm will depend on the nature and extent of the radiation produced, the amount and nature of exposure, the biochemical properties of the element.
However, radionuclides with suitable properties are used in nuclear medicine for both diagnosis and treatment. An imaging tracer made with radionuclides is called a radioactive tracer. A pharmaceutical drug made with radionuclides is called a radiopharmaceutical. On Earth occurring radionuclides fall into three categories: primordial radionuclides, secondary radionuclides, cosmogenic radionuclides. Radionuclides are produced in stellar nucleosynthesis and supernova explosions along with stable nuclides. Most decay but can still be observed astronomically and can play a part in understanding astronomic processes. Primordial radionuclides, such as uranium and thorium, exist in the present time because their half-lives are so long that they have not yet decayed; some radionuclides have half-lives so long that decay has only been detected, for most practical purposes they can be considered stable, most notably bismuth-209: detection of this decay meant that bismuth was no longer considered stable.
It is possible decay may be observed in other nuclides adding to this list of primordial radionuclides. Secondary radionuclides are radiogenic isotopes derived from the decay of primordial radionuclides, they have shorter half-lives than primordial radionuclides. They arise in the decay chain of the primordial isotopes thorium-232, uranium-238 and uranium-235. Examples include the natural isotopes of radium. Cosmogenic isotopes, such as carbon-14, are present because they are continually being formed in the atmosphere due to cosmic rays. Many of these radionuclides exist only in trace amounts in nature, including all cosmogenic nuclides. Secondary radionuclides will occur in proportion to their half-lives, so short-lived ones will be rare, thus polonium can be found in uranium ores at about 0.1 mg per metric ton. Further radionunclides may occur in nature in undetectable amounts as a result of rare events such as spontaneous fission or uncommon cosmic ray interactions. Radionuclides are produced as an unavoidable result of nuclear thermonuclear explosions.
The process of nuclear fission creates a wide range of fission products, most of which are radionuclides. Further radionuclides can be created from irradiation of the nuclear fuel and of the surrounding structures, yielding activation products; this complex mixture of radionuclides with different chemistries and radioactivity makes handling nuclear waste and dealing with nuclear fallout problematic. Synthetic radionuclides are deliberately synthesised using nuclear reactors, particle accelerators or radionuclide generators: As well as being extracted from nuclear waste, radioisotopes can be produced deliberately with nuclear reactors, exploiting the high flux of neutrons present; these neutrons activate elements placed within the reactor. A typical product from a nuclear reactor is iridium-
Positron
The positron or antielectron is the antiparticle or the antimatter counterpart of the electron. The positron has an electric charge of +1 e, a spin of 1/2, has the same mass as an electron; when a positron collides with an electron, annihilation occurs. If this collision occurs at low energies, it results in the production of two or more gamma ray photons. Positrons can be created by positron emission radioactive decay, or by pair production from a sufficiently energetic photon, interacting with an atom in a material. In 1928, Paul Dirac published a paper proposing that electrons can have both a positive and negative charge; this paper introduced the Dirac equation, a unification of quantum mechanics, special relativity, the then-new concept of electron spin to explain the Zeeman effect. The paper did not explicitly predict a new particle but did allow for electrons having either positive or negative energy as solutions. Hermann Weyl published a paper discussing the mathematical implications of the negative energy solution.
The positive-energy solution explained experimental results, but Dirac was puzzled by the valid negative-energy solution that the mathematical model allowed. Quantum mechanics did not allow the negative energy solution to be ignored, as classical mechanics did in such equations. However, no such transition had yet been observed experimentally. Dirac wrote a follow-up paper in December 1929 that attempted to explain the unavoidable negative-energy solution for the relativistic electron, he argued that "... an electron with negative energy moves in an external field as though it carries a positive charge." He further asserted that all of space could be regarded as a "sea" of negative energy states that were filled, so as to prevent electrons jumping between positive energy states and negative energy states. The paper explored the possibility of the proton being an island in this sea, that it might be a negative-energy electron. Dirac acknowledged that the proton having a much greater mass than the electron was a problem, but expressed "hope" that a future theory would resolve the issue.
Robert Oppenheimer argued against the proton being the negative-energy electron solution to Dirac's equation. He asserted that if it were, the hydrogen atom would self-destruct. Persuaded by Oppenheimer's argument, Dirac published a paper in 1931 that predicted the existence of an as-yet-unobserved particle that he called an "anti-electron" that would have the same mass and the opposite charge as an electron and that would mutually annihilate upon contact with an electron. Feynman, earlier Stueckelberg, proposed an interpretation of the positron as an electron moving backward in time, reinterpreting the negative-energy solutions of the Dirac equation. Electrons moving backward in time would have a positive electric charge. Wheeler invoked this concept to explain the identical properties shared by all electrons, suggesting that "they are all the same electron" with a complex, self-intersecting worldline. Yoichiro Nambu applied it to all production and annihilation of particle-antiparticle pairs, stating that "the eventual creation and annihilation of pairs that may occur now and is no creation or annihilation, but only a change of direction of moving particles, from the past to the future, or from the future to the past."
The backwards in time point of view is nowadays accepted as equivalent to other pictures, but it does not have anything to do with the macroscopic terms "cause" and "effect", which do not appear in a microscopic physical description. Dmitri Skobeltsyn first observed the positron in 1929. While using a Wilson cloud chamber to try to detect gamma radiation in cosmic rays, Skobeltsyn detected particles that acted like electrons but curved in the opposite direction in an applied magnetic field. In 1929 Chung-Yao Chao, a graduate student at Caltech, noticed some anomalous results that indicated particles behaving like electrons, but with a positive charge, though the results were inconclusive and the phenomenon was not pursued. Carl David Anderson discovered the positron on 2 August 1932, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1936. Anderson did not coin the term positron, but allowed it at the suggestion of the Physical Review journal editor to whom he submitted his discovery paper in late 1932.
The positron was the first evidence of antimatter and was discovered when Anderson allowed cosmic rays to pass through a cloud chamber and a lead plate. A magnet surrounded this apparatus, causing particles to bend in different directions based on their electric charge; the ion trail left by each positron appeared on the photographic plate with a curvature matching the mass-to-charge ratio of an electron, but in a direction that showed its charge was positive. Anderson wrote in retrospect that the positron could have been discovered earlier based on Chung-Yao Chao's work, if only it had been followed up on. Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie in Paris had evidence of positrons in old photographs when Anderson's results came out, but they had dismissed them as protons; the positron had been contemporaneously discovered by Patrick Blackett and Giuseppe Occhialini at the Cavendish Laboratory in 1932. Blackett and Occhialini had delayed publication to obtain more solid evidence, so Anderson was able to publish the discovery first.
Positrons are produced in β+ decays of occurring radioactive isotopes and in interactions of gamma quanta with matter. Antineutrinos a
Nitrogen
Nitrogen is a chemical element with symbol N and atomic number 7. It was first discovered and isolated by Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford in 1772. Although Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Henry Cavendish had independently done so at about the same time, Rutherford is accorded the credit because his work was published first; the name nitrogène was suggested by French chemist Jean-Antoine-Claude Chaptal in 1790, when it was found that nitrogen was present in nitric acid and nitrates. Antoine Lavoisier suggested instead the name azote, from the Greek ἀζωτικός "no life", as it is an asphyxiant gas. Nitrogen is the lightest member of group 15 of the periodic table called the pnictogens; the name comes from the Greek πνίγειν "to choke", directly referencing nitrogen's asphyxiating properties. It is a common element in the universe, estimated at about seventh in total abundance in the Milky Way and the Solar System. At standard temperature and pressure, two atoms of the element bind to form dinitrogen, a colourless and odorless diatomic gas with the formula N2.
Dinitrogen forms about 78 % of Earth's atmosphere. Nitrogen occurs in all organisms in amino acids, in the nucleic acids and in the energy transfer molecule adenosine triphosphate; the human body contains about 3% nitrogen by mass, the fourth most abundant element in the body after oxygen and hydrogen. The nitrogen cycle describes movement of the element from the air, into the biosphere and organic compounds back into the atmosphere. Many industrially important compounds, such as ammonia, nitric acid, organic nitrates, cyanides, contain nitrogen; the strong triple bond in elemental nitrogen, the second strongest bond in any diatomic molecule after carbon monoxide, dominates nitrogen chemistry. This causes difficulty for both organisms and industry in converting N2 into useful compounds, but at the same time means that burning, exploding, or decomposing nitrogen compounds to form nitrogen gas releases large amounts of useful energy. Synthetically produced ammonia and nitrates are key industrial fertilisers, fertiliser nitrates are key pollutants in the eutrophication of water systems.
Apart from its use in fertilisers and energy-stores, nitrogen is a constituent of organic compounds as diverse as Kevlar used in high-strength fabric and cyanoacrylate used in superglue. Nitrogen is a constituent including antibiotics. Many drugs are mimics or prodrugs of natural nitrogen-containing signal molecules: for example, the organic nitrates nitroglycerin and nitroprusside control blood pressure by metabolizing into nitric oxide. Many notable nitrogen-containing drugs, such as the natural caffeine and morphine or the synthetic amphetamines, act on receptors of animal neurotransmitters. Nitrogen compounds have a long history, ammonium chloride having been known to Herodotus, they were well known by the Middle Ages. Alchemists knew nitric acid as aqua fortis, as well as other nitrogen compounds such as ammonium salts and nitrate salts; the mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids was known as aqua regia, celebrated for its ability to dissolve gold, the king of metals. The discovery of nitrogen is attributed to the Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford in 1772, who called it noxious air.
Though he did not recognise it as an different chemical substance, he distinguished it from Joseph Black's "fixed air", or carbon dioxide. The fact that there was a component of air that does not support combustion was clear to Rutherford, although he was not aware that it was an element. Nitrogen was studied at about the same time by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Henry Cavendish, Joseph Priestley, who referred to it as burnt air or phlogisticated air. Nitrogen gas was inert enough that Antoine Lavoisier referred to it as "mephitic air" or azote, from the Greek word άζωτικός, "no life". In an atmosphere of pure nitrogen, animals died and flames were extinguished. Though Lavoisier's name was not accepted in English, since it was pointed out that all gases are mephitic, it is used in many languages and still remains in English in the common names of many nitrogen compounds, such as hydrazine and compounds of the azide ion, it led to the name "pnictogens" for the group headed by nitrogen, from the Greek πνίγειν "to choke".
The English word nitrogen entered the language from the French nitrogène, coined in 1790 by French chemist Jean-Antoine Chaptal, from the French nitre and the French suffix -gène, "producing", from the Greek -γενής. Chaptal's meaning was that nitrogen is the essential part of nitric acid, which in turn was produced from nitre. In earlier times, niter had been confused with Egyptian "natron" – called νίτρον in Greek – which, despite the name, contained no nitrate; the earliest military and agricultural applications of nitrogen compounds used saltpeter, most notably in gunpowder, as fertiliser. In 1910, Lord Rayleigh discovered that an electrical discharge in nitrogen gas produced "active nitrogen", a monatomic allotrope of nitrogen; the "whirling cloud of brilliant yellow light
Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker was a German physicist and philosopher. He was the longest-living member of the team which performed nuclear research in Germany during the Second World War, under Werner Heisenberg's leadership. There is ongoing debate as to whether or not he and the other members of the team and willingly pursued the development of a nuclear bomb for Germany during this time. A member of the prominent Weizsäcker family, he was son of the diplomat Ernst von Weizsäcker, elder brother of the former German President Richard von Weizsäcker, father of the physicist and environmental researcher Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker and father-in-law of the former General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, Konrad Raiser. Weizsäcker made important theoretical discoveries regarding energy production in stars from nuclear fusion processes, he did influential theoretical work on planetary formation in the early Solar System. In his late career, he focused more on philosophical and ethical issues, was awarded several international honors for his work in those areas.
Born in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, he was the grandson of Karl Hugo von Weizsäcker, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Württemberg. His grandfather was ennobled in 1897 and raised to the hereditary nobility with the title of Baron in 1916; as such, the four-year-old Carl Friedrich Weizsäcker became Baron Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. Since 1919, noble titles have been considered parts of the family name. Weizsäcker was raised in Stuttgart and Copenhagen. Between 1929 and 1933 Weizsäcker studied physics and astronomy in Berlin, Göttingen and Leipzig, supervised by and working with Heisenberg and Niels Bohr, among others; the supervisor of his doctoral thesis was Friedrich Hund. Weizsäcker's special interests as a young researcher were the nuclear processes in stars and the binding energy of atomic nuclei. Together with Hans Bethe he found a pathway for the cyclic process of fusion in stars; this discovery should not be confused with his development of the Bethe–Weizsäcker formula, or Semi-Empirical Mass Formula, a theoretical formula relating the curve of nuclear binding energy, nuclear masses, certain other nuclear properties.
In 1938, Weizsäcker developed a theory on the formation of the Solar System, based on considerations regarding the unequal share of lighter and heavier elements in the Sun and the Solar System's terrestrial planets. His views were generally acknowledged and refined by a large number of other physicists and astronomers. According to the theory, the Sun and its planets evolved from a gas cloud made up of 99% hydrogen and helium, 1% of heavier elements; some 10% of the cloud remained around the Sun as an extensive atmosphere during an initial phase, the 1% of heavier elements within this 10% of the total mass of the cloud would tally with the fraction of 1% that the planets contribute to the mass of the Solar System today. The theory helped to explain the empirically observed regular pattern of increase in the diameters of the orbits of the planets of the Solar System, from inward to outward; this result was a natural outcome of the increasing size of "planetary eddies" of gas and dust farther from the centre of the early solar system.
A further implication of his theory was that many stars out in the universe, with characteristics similar to the Sun, would have to be expected to possess planetary systems similar to our own. Shortly after the end of the Second World War in Europe, the Russian emigre American physicist George Gamow co-authored an influential paper supporting Weizsäcker's work on planetary formation in the early solar system. After nuclear fission became known in early 1939 through the work of Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner, Weizsäcker recognised that nuclear weapons could be built, he discussed the upsetting implications in February 1939 with philosopher friend Georg Picht. During the Second World War, Weizsäcker joined the German nuclear energy project, participating in efforts to construct an atomic bomb; as early as August 1939, Albert Einstein warned U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt about this research and highlighted that "the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weizsäcker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated."As a protégé of Werner Heisenberg, Weizsäcker was present at a crucial meeting at the Army Ordnance headquarters in Berlin on 17 September 1939, at which the German atomic weapons program was launched.
Early in the war — until 1942 — he hoped a successful nuclear weapons project would earn him political influence. In July 1940 he was co-author of a report to the army on the possibility of "energy production" from refined uranium; the report predicted the possibility of using plutonium for the same purpose including the production of a new type of explosives. During summer 1942 Weizsäcker filed a patent on a transportable "process to generate energy and neutrons by an explosion... e.g. a bomb". The patent application was found in the 1990s in Moscow. Historians have been divided as to whether Heisenberg and his team were sincerely trying to construct a nuclear weapon, or whether their failure reflected a desire not to succeed because they did not want the Nazi regime to have such a weapon; this latter view based on postwar interviews with Heisenberg and Weizsäcker, was put forward by Robert Jungk in his 1957 book Brighter Than a Thousand Suns. In a 1957 interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel, Weizsäcker frankly admitted to the scientific ambitions of those years "We wanted to know if
Gamma ray
A gamma ray or gamma radiation, is a penetrating electromagnetic radiation arising from the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei. It consists of the shortest wavelength electromagnetic waves and so imparts the highest photon energy. Paul Villard, a French chemist and physicist, discovered gamma radiation in 1900 while studying radiation emitted by radium. In 1903, Ernest Rutherford named this radiation gamma rays based on their strong penetration of matter. Gamma rays from radioactive decay are in the energy range from a few keV to ~8 MeV, corresponding to the typical energy levels in nuclei with reasonably long lifetimes; the energy spectrum of gamma rays can be used to identify the decaying radionuclides using gamma spectroscopy. Very-high-energy gamma rays in the 100–1000 TeV range have been observed from sources such as the Cygnus X-3 microquasar. Natural sources of gamma rays originating on Earth are as a result of radioactive decay and secondary radiation from atmospheric interactions with cosmic ray particles.
However there are other rare natural sources, such as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, that produce gamma rays from electron action upon the nucleus. Notable artificial sources of gamma rays include fission, such as occurs in nuclear reactors, as well as high energy physics experiments, such as neutral pion decay and nuclear fusion. Gamma rays and X-rays are both electromagnetic radiation and they overlap in the electromagnetic spectrum, the terminology varies between scientific disciplines. In some fields of physics, they are distinguished by their origin: Gamma rays are created by nuclear decay, while in the case of X-rays, the origin is outside the nucleus. In astrophysics, gamma rays are conventionally defined as having photon energies above 100 keV and are the subject of gamma ray astronomy, while radiation below 100 keV is classified as X-rays and is the subject of X-ray astronomy; this convention stems from the early man-made X-rays, which had energies only up to 100 keV, whereas many gamma rays could go to higher energies.
A large fraction of astronomical gamma rays are screened by Earth's atmosphere. Gamma rays are thus biologically hazardous. Due to their high penetration power, they can damage internal organs. Unlike alpha and beta rays, they pass through the body and thus pose a formidable radiation protection challenge, requiring shielding made from dense materials such as lead or concrete; the first gamma ray source to be discovered was the radioactive decay process called gamma decay. In this type of decay, an excited nucleus emits a gamma ray immediately upon formation. Paul Villard, a French chemist and physicist, discovered gamma radiation in 1900, while studying radiation emitted from radium. Villard knew that his described radiation was more powerful than described types of rays from radium, which included beta rays, first noted as "radioactivity" by Henri Becquerel in 1896, alpha rays, discovered as a less penetrating form of radiation by Rutherford, in 1899. However, Villard did not consider naming them as a different fundamental type.
In 1903, Villard's radiation was recognized as being of a type fundamentally different from named rays by Ernest Rutherford, who named Villard's rays "gamma rays" by analogy with the beta and alpha rays that Rutherford had differentiated in 1899. The "rays" emitted by radioactive elements were named in order of their power to penetrate various materials, using the first three letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha rays as the least penetrating, followed by beta rays, followed by gamma rays as the most penetrating. Rutherford noted that gamma rays were not deflected by a magnetic field, another property making them unlike alpha and beta rays. Gamma rays were first thought to be particles like alpha and beta rays. Rutherford believed that they might be fast beta particles, but their failure to be deflected by a magnetic field indicated that they had no charge. In 1914, gamma rays were observed to be reflected from crystal surfaces, proving that they were electromagnetic radiation. Rutherford and his co-worker Edward Andrade measured the wavelengths of gamma rays from radium, found that they were similar to X-rays, but with shorter wavelengths and higher frequency.
This was recognized as giving them more energy per photon, as soon as the latter term became accepted. A gamma decay was understood to emit a gamma photon. Natural sources of gamma rays on Earth include gamma decay from occurring radioisotopes such as potassium-40, as a secondary radiation from various atmospheric interactions with cosmic ray particles; some rare terrestrial natural sources that produce gamma rays that are not of a nuclear origin, are lightning strikes and terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, which produce high energy emissions from natural high-energy voltages. Gamma rays are produced by a number of astronomical processes in which high-energy electrons are produced; such electrons produce secondary gamma rays by the mechanisms of bremsstrahlung, inverse Compton scattering and synchrotron radiation. A large fraction of such astronomical gamma rays are screened by Earth's atmosphere. Notable artificial sources of gamma rays include fission, such as occurs in nuclear reactors, as well as high energy physics experiments, such as neutral pion decay and nuclear fusion.
A sample of gamma ray-emitting material, used for irradiating or imaging is known as a gamma source. It is called a radioactive sou
Catalytic cycle
In chemistry, a catalytic cycle is a multistep reaction mechanism that involves a catalyst. The catalytic cycle is the main method for describing the role of catalysts in biochemistry, organometallic chemistry, bioinorganic chemistry, materials science, etc. Since catalysts are regenerated, catalytic cycles are written as a sequence of chemical reactions in the form of a loop. In such loops, the initial step entails binding of one or more reactants by the catalyst, the final step is the release of the product and regeneration of the catalyst. Articles on the Monsanto process, the Wacker process, the Heck reaction show catalytic cycles. A catalytic cycle is not a full reaction mechanism. For example, it may be that the intermediates have been detected, but it is not known by which mechanisms the actual elementary reactions occur. Precatalysts are precursors to catalysts. Precatalysts are converted in the reactor to the actual catalytic species; the identification of catalysts vs precatalysts is an important theme in catalysis research.
The conversion of a precatalyst to a catalyst is called catalyst activation. Many metal halides are precatalysts for olefin polymerization, see Kaminsky catalyst and Ziegler-Natta catalysis; the precatalysts, e.g. titanium trichloride, are activated by organoaluminium compounds, which function as catalyst activators. Metal oxides are classified as catalysts, but in fact are always precatalysts. Applications include olefin hydrogenation; the metal oxides require some activating reagent a reducing agent, to enter the catalytic cycle. Catalytic cycles show the conversion of a precatalyst to the catalyst. A so-called sacrificial catalyst is part of the reaction system with the purpose of regenerating the true catalyst in each cycle; as the name implies, the sacrificial catalyst is not regenerated and is irreversibly consumed, thereby not a catalyst at all. This sacrificial compound is known as a stoichiometric catalyst when added in stoichiometric quantities compared to the main reactant; the true catalyst is an expensive and complex molecule and added in quantities as small as possible.
The stoichiometric catalyst on the other hand should be abundant. "Sacrificial catalysts" are more referred to by their actual role in the catalytic cycle, for example as a reductant, a terminal oxidant, or an initiator
Carbon
Carbon is a chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds, it belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Three isotopes occur 12C and 13C being stable, while 14C is a radionuclide, decaying with a half-life of about 5,730 years. Carbon is one of the few elements known since antiquity. Carbon is the 15th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen and oxygen. Carbon's abundance, its unique diversity of organic compounds, its unusual ability to form polymers at the temperatures encountered on Earth enables this element to serve as a common element of all known life, it is the second most abundant element in the human body by mass after oxygen. The atoms of carbon can bond together in different ways, termed allotropes of carbon; the best known are graphite and amorphous carbon. The physical properties of carbon vary with the allotropic form.
For example, graphite is opaque and black while diamond is transparent. Graphite is soft enough to form a streak on paper, while diamond is the hardest occurring material known. Graphite is a good electrical conductor. Under normal conditions, carbon nanotubes, graphene have the highest thermal conductivities of all known materials. All carbon allotropes are solids under normal conditions, with graphite being the most thermodynamically stable form at standard temperature and pressure, they are chemically resistant and require high temperature to react with oxygen. The most common oxidation state of carbon in inorganic compounds is +4, while +2 is found in carbon monoxide and transition metal carbonyl complexes; the largest sources of inorganic carbon are limestones and carbon dioxide, but significant quantities occur in organic deposits of coal, peat and methane clathrates. Carbon forms a vast number of compounds, more than any other element, with ten million compounds described to date, yet that number is but a fraction of the number of theoretically possible compounds under standard conditions.
For this reason, carbon has been referred to as the "king of the elements". The allotropes of carbon include graphite, one of the softest known substances, diamond, the hardest occurring substance, it bonds with other small atoms, including other carbon atoms, is capable of forming multiple stable covalent bonds with suitable multivalent atoms. Carbon is known to form ten million different compounds, a large majority of all chemical compounds. Carbon has the highest sublimation point of all elements. At atmospheric pressure it has no melting point, as its triple point is at 10.8±0.2 MPa and 4,600 ± 300 K, so it sublimes at about 3,900 K. Graphite is much more reactive than diamond at standard conditions, despite being more thermodynamically stable, as its delocalised pi system is much more vulnerable to attack. For example, graphite can be oxidised by hot concentrated nitric acid at standard conditions to mellitic acid, C66, which preserves the hexagonal units of graphite while breaking up the larger structure.
Carbon sublimes in a carbon arc, which has a temperature of about 5800 K. Thus, irrespective of its allotropic form, carbon remains solid at higher temperatures than the highest-melting-point metals such as tungsten or rhenium. Although thermodynamically prone to oxidation, carbon resists oxidation more than elements such as iron and copper, which are weaker reducing agents at room temperature. Carbon is the sixth element, with a ground-state electron configuration of 1s22s22p2, of which the four outer electrons are valence electrons, its first four ionisation energies, 1086.5, 2352.6, 4620.5 and 6222.7 kJ/mol, are much higher than those of the heavier group-14 elements. The electronegativity of carbon is 2.5 higher than the heavier group-14 elements, but close to most of the nearby nonmetals, as well as some of the second- and third-row transition metals. Carbon's covalent radii are taken as 77.2 pm, 66.7 pm and 60.3 pm, although these may vary depending on coordination number and what the carbon is bonded to.
In general, covalent radius decreases with higher bond order. Carbon compounds form the basis of all known life on Earth, the carbon–nitrogen cycle provides some of the energy produced by the Sun and other stars. Although it forms an extraordinary variety of compounds, most forms of carbon are comparatively unreactive under normal conditions. At standard temperature and pressure, it resists all but the strongest oxidizers, it does not react with hydrochloric acid, chlorine or any alkalis. At elevated temperatures, carbon reacts with oxygen to form carbon oxides and will rob oxygen from metal oxides to leave the elemental metal; this exothermic reaction is used in the iron and steel industry to smelt iron and to control the carbon content of steel: Fe3O4 + 4 C → 3 Fe + 4 COCarbon monoxide can be recycled to smelt more iron: Fe3O4 + 4 CO → 3 Fe + 4 CO2with sulfur to form carbon disulfide and with steam in the coal-gas reaction: C + H2O → CO + H2. Carbon combines with some metals at high temperatures to form metallic carbides, such as the iron carbide cementite in steel and tungsten carbide used as an abrasive and for making hard tips for cutting tools.
The system of carbon allotropes spans a range of extremes: Atomic carbon is a ver
