Chapter 2

Summary:
Words are meant for communication to run smoothly by identifying all objects and ideas. In chemistry, there are long words that names one of the most important and microscopic structures, proteins. Although taken out of the oxford dictionary for not being a legitimate word, the tobacco mosaic virus was once the longest word in the dictionary. Now and days, the length of this name does not compare to recent protein discovered; as an estimation, it would take about "forty-seven single-spaced pages of a Microsoft Word document in Times New Roman 12-point font" to write down the name of the protein titin. Protein is very important because it is responsible for all life to exist. The reason for this is of its elemental structure. Most, but not all protein are made out of oxygen and nitrogen, but the most important part of every protein is its backbone which is made out of carbon.
An idea surged that silicon, who's location stands bottom of carbon, should be able to replace carbon as a substitute. The reason for this is because both carbon and silicon have their outer most shell filled with four electrons which means that both should interact with other elements exactly the same way. Although some of this is true, silicon just is not fit to fill in the job to create and sustain life like carbon because carbon has qualities what silicon doesn't have. For example, unlike carbon based molecules like carbon dioxide, replacing silicon with carbon will make the substance from a gas to a solid which would be almost impossible, as a byproduct, to be release from the body since gasses are easier to transport than solids. Also, carbon can form complex covalent bond structure which store an abundant of chemical energy; silicon cannot form these structures because it doesn't have the atomic structure to create and sustain double bonds.
Although silicon cannot replace the job of carbon, it is still a very important element because its other qualities fits best with another special job, electronics. Trying to create a better amplifier, scientists tried to work with silicon since it property of semi conductor was perfect in order to control the flow of electrons. It took many years to find the best was to use the silicon, but when they were able to produce the first silicon transistor, the importance of silicon rose. Since it was very cheap and abundant, silicon is still in use, staying strong with doing its job. Just like the thought of silicon replacing carbon, germanium was an alternative for silicon. Since both are semi conductors and have the same number of electrons in their outer energy level, they would have the same result. Unfortunately, germanium was very not as abundant and cheap as silicon so it remained in the periodic table forgotten like many others.

Reflection:
The idea of silicon replacing carbon in molecules was very interesting and amazing because at first, I thought of the possibility to create a living organism with pure silicon based structures (basically replacing all of were carbon would of taken place). Learning this also lead me believe that we could experiment this same idea with other molecules by replacing one element with its bottom neighbors from the periodic table. Sadly I was reminded that every element have their own characteristics which means that although they have the possibility to replace certain elements from a molecule, the molecule itself would overcome changes which either are helpful or harmful. I am also amazed how scientist really are because in my experience, scientist only care about discovering new things in order to expand the knowledge of the universe. It is interesting that scientist would have a "war" just for recognition; still, not being recognized at all will decrease the desire to continue with their research, so at least it still serves a purpose when giving recognition to people who steal it.
I enjoyed this chapter because it explained something that I was confused about. In order for our body to produce energy, it needs to produce ATP and then break it down to release the stored chemical energy. For a long time, I was taught that breaking down molecules took more energy than bonding elements together. Now I learned that since ATP is a structure with carbon as its backbone, the carbon structure should stores more energy than is required to break down the molecule. Now I wonder what is the ratio of energy from the carbon structure to the energy required to break down the molecule.