Kind: captions
Language: en
and now for some final thoughts on
carbon you might think of carbon as a
kind of unpleasant little element after
all it's the active ingredient in soot
it's also the stuff left over after you
burn your toast but it's actually quite
distinguished among elements Carbon has
the highest melting point pure carbon
can become graphite one of the softest
materials around used every time you
write with a pencil meanwhile pure
carbon when exposed to heat pressure and
a little bit of time also makes Diamond
one of the hardest materials around used
for the cutting tips of masonry saws and
jackhammers perhaps you didn't know but
when light passes into a diamond it
slows down to only 40% of its speed and
a vacuum oh and did I mention you can
use diamonds to make jewelry but carbons
greatest distinction of all is that it's
the building block for the molecules of
life carbon it's remarkably fertile you
can make more molecules with carbon in
them than you can with all other kinds
of molecules combined so we shouldn't be
surprised that life the most complex
expression of chemistry we know is based
on carbon and because carbon is the
third most abundant chemically active
ingredient in the universe right after
hydrogen and oxygen we're given every
reason to presume that yet to be
discovered life elsewhere in the cosmos
would be based on carbon as well so what
would we do where would we be without
carbon jewelry would be a lot less
interesting but that would be the least
of our concerns since life itself
probably would not exist at all and that
is the cosmic perspective
you