But what makes up a carbon atom—or any other atom? The first subatomic particle to be identified was the electron, in 1898. Ten years later, the British physicist Ernest Rutherford discovered ...

If you've ever seen a d4 or a caltrop, you've seen the shape of the bond sites on a carbon atom: four equilateral triangles, arranged into a three-faced pyramid with a triangular base. Every ...

But what is it really but a collection of ordinary carbon atoms—the same kind of atom that makes up 18 percent of your body and is an essential ingredient of all living things? This Hot Science ...