Where would carbon-based life be without carbon? There are 118 known chemical elements, but carbon is the fourth most abundant and perhaps the most important to human life. Everywhere you look ...

An element’s chemical symbol is a single capital letter or a capital letter followed by a lower case letter. What is carbon? Find out about the structure and properties of the element carbon.

When cosmic rays reach Earth’s upper atmosphere, physical and chemical interactions form the radioactive isotope carbon-14. Living organisms absorb this carbon-14 into their tissue. Once they die, the ...

This means that the chemical formula of water is H₂O. Carbon dioxide is made of molecules of a carbon atom bonded to two oxygen atoms (CO₂). Atoms can be drawn as circles. But all the atoms ...

Sometimes these elements are unwanted; other times they're intentionally added. Carbon (C): Carbon, a nonmetallic element, forms a number of organic and inorganic compounds and can be found in ...