{"id":5906,"date":"2013-05-15T06:35:48","date_gmt":"2013-05-15T06:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/?p=5906"},"modified":"2014-12-02T08:27:02","modified_gmt":"2014-12-02T08:27:02","slug":"chemical-bonds-and-reactions-in-living-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/chemical-bonds-and-reactions-in-living-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Chemical Bonds and Reactions in Living Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

Overview<\/strong>
\nChemicals form the basic building blocks of matter in living things as well as nonliving things.\u00a0 Molecules are formed by chemical bonds that join elements and make substances.\u00a0 Chemical reactions are the basis of transformations of molecules into entirely different substances, the release of energy, and the processes of life.<\/p>\n

Ionic Chemical Bonds<\/strong>
\nIonic bonds are formed by electronic attraction.\u00a0 The simplest and most common example is the attraction between sodium (chemical name Na), and chlorine (Cl), to form NaCl, sodium chloride, common table salt.\u00a0 The outermost level of a sodium atom only has one electron, and can easily give it up in a \u00a0chemical reaction.\u00a0 The outermost level of a chlorine atom, by contrast, has 7 electrons, and can easily take an electron from another atom.\u00a0 \u00a0When the sodium atom gives up its electron, it is slightly positively charged, and when the chlorine atom gains an electron, it is slightly negatively charged.\u00a0 The positively charged sodium atom and the negatively charged \u00a0chlorine atom are held together in a compound be an ionic bond.<\/p>\n

Covalent Chemical Bonds<\/strong>
\nCovalent chemical bonds are stronger than ionic bonds, because more than one element shares electrons.\u00a0 The water molecule, or H2<\/sub>O, is one of the most common examples.\u00a0 The hydrogen atoms share electrons with the oxygen atoms, and the oxygen atoms also share electrons with the hydrogen atoms, so the bond works both ways.\u00a0 Methane is another common compound.\u00a0 Carbon (C) shares electrons with 4 hydrogen atoms (H4<\/sub>), and the hydrogen atoms share electrons with the carbon atoms in covalent bonds.<\/p>\n

Common Elements for Life<\/strong>
\nElements such as hydrogen (H), carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and oxygen (O),are the most common elements found in life, making up over 99 % of living things.\u00a0 Sodium (S), magnesium (Mg), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), phosphorus (P), sulfur (S), and chlorine (Cl) make up less than 0.7%, although they are crucial to certain chemical reactions.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Other trace elements include vanadium (V), chromium (Cr), manganese (Mn), molybdenum (Mo), iron (Fe), cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), silicon (Si), tin (Sn), selenium (Se), and iodine (I).<\/p>\n

Chemical Reactions<\/strong>
\nChemical reactions occur when the bonds between atoms in a compound are broken down, so that new bonds between atoms may be formed.\u00a0 The most common way is through heat energy.\u00a0 For example, if sugar is heated past a certain point it will turn black, forming carbon, and release water vapor\u00a0 and carbon dioxide.\u00a0 Because most chemical reactions in living organisms use up more energy than they create, living organisms need food for most processes.<\/p>\n

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Overview Chemicals form the basic building blocks of matter in living things as well as nonliving things.\u00a0 Molecules are formed by chemical bonds that join elements and make substances.\u00a0 Chemical reactions are the basis of transformations of molecules into entirely different substances, the release of energy, and the processes of life. Ionic Chemical Bonds Ionic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[267,425,978],"class_list":["post-5906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biology","category-chemistry","tag-chemical-reactions-in-living-things","tag-covalent-bonds","tag-ionic-bonds"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}