Free response question
describe the properties of carbon that makes it possible for millions of carbon compounds to occur naturally.

Carbon has an exceptional ability to bind with a wide variety of other elements. Carbon makes four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds, allowing carbon atoms to form multiple stable bonds with other small atoms, including hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen

Explanation:

Carbon atoms have 4 electrons in their outermost capacity, which allows them to form a wide variety of atomic orbitals with great binding power. Carbon atoms can be linked together in a variety of ways and in a number of atoms. Then chains of miles of atoms or rings of all sizes can be formed; These chains and rings may have ramifications. Other atoms are attached to the carbons of these chains and rings; mainly hydrogen, oxygen, fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus. For example, there are carbon and hydrogen compounds called aliphatic hydrocarbons, in which the carbon atoms are joined by one, two or three bonds forming chains. Another example is aromatic hydrocarbons, where carbon atoms associate with each other and with other elements forming cyclic structures that contain delocalized electrons.

This particular characteristic of carbon (the ability to bond with each other as well as with many other elements) is what allows so many carbon compounds to exist.

most historians agree that gabriel mouton, the vicar of st. paul’s church in lyons, france, is the “founding father” of the metric system. he proposed a decimal system of measurement in 1670. mouton based it on the length of one minute of arc of a great circle of the earth (now called a nautical mile, 1852 meters). he also proposed the swing-length of a pendulum with a frequency of one beat per second as the unit of length (about 25 cm). a pendulum beating with this length would have been fairly easy to produce, thus facilitating the widespread distribution of uniform standards. over the years, his work was revised, improved, and extended by a number of french scientists.

the political sponsor of weights and measures reform in the french revolutionary national assembly was the bishop of autun, better known as talleyrand. under his auspices, the french academy appointed several committees to carry out the work of developing a usable system of weights and measures for france. one of the committees recommended a decimalized measurement system based upon a length equal to one ten-millionth of the length of a quadrant of the earth’s meridian (i.e., one ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and the north pole).

the answer is barium and copper bromide