User:Tshepang Hawking

Hawk Chemistry Organic compounds comprise the largest group of compounds on earth. Many things around you have carbon as the most abundant atom in them, including food, clothes, paper, coal, fuel, diamonds … the list is endless. The carbon atom has wonderful properties that make it bond easily with other carbon atoms and with other atoms to form short chains and long chains. From methane, a dominant constituent of marsh gas to polymers … A long time ago, clothes were made from cotton only, which is made up of carbon atoms. The second industrial revolution brought about the process of synthesis, when people realised that they can make new products from existing materials and turn the material into something completely new through a range of reactions that usually mimic something that already exists naturally. Polymers are such an example. To a large extent, they have replaced cotton through reactions that produce synthetic materials such as polyester, polyamides, etc. These play an important role in the clothing industry, and in many other industrial and home products. In South Africa, SASOL produced petrol out of coal. That is the beauty of synthesis: petrol from coal and not from oil!