Carbon in the world

Organic Molecules in your world

Organic means A chemical compound that contains carbon. Some examples of organic molecules are sugar and starch, proteins, fats (lipids), amino acids (DNA), oil, gasoline, and methane (and many more!)

Goal: Learn about organic molecules and where you can find carbon in the natural world.

Background
Molecules are the smallest part of all chemical compounds. Compounds can be either organic or inorganic, Organic molecules are carbon-based, whereas inorganic molecules are not.

There are four major groups of organic molecules:

proteins - the workhorses (enzymes, hormones, carriers, etc.) of the cells
lipids - energy storage & protection, hormones, cholesterol , phospholipids (membrane structure) (fats and oils)
carbohydrates - energy carriers, structural units (sugar and starch)
nucleic acids - genetic information (amino acids)

Where can you find different organic molecules?

Molecule	Examples	Where to find it?
Proteins	amino acids	Cells: Flagella, cell walls, cell membranes, ribosomes, cytoplasm (as enzymes)
Polysaccharides	sugars or other carbohydrate molecules	cell walls, mitochondria
Phospholipids	fatty acids, oils, fats	cell membranes
Nucleic Acids (DNA/RNA)	nucleotides, amino acids	DNA: nucleus, nucleoid (chromosome), plasmids rRNA: ribosomes
Note: dead organic matter has a mixture of many kinds of organic molecues (dead animals, soil, etc)
Non-living
Hydrocarbons	gasoline, methane, alcohol	fossil fuels, animal digestion,
	carbon dioxide, carbonic acid	atmosphere, lakes, rivers, ocean
	calcium carbonate	rocks, oceans, corals, sea shells

Do you remember the parts of a cell? Click here.
Places to find organic compounds: Click here.

Directions: Create a web page showing organic molecues.

1. Use Google Images search to find pictures/drawings of 8 kinds of carbon-based molecules.
Include examples of : sugar, fat, protein, methane, amino acid, alcohol, carbon dioxide, calcium carbonate

2. Include this information for each molecule:

The name of the molecule
A picture/drawing of the molecule
How many carbon atoms are in the molecule.
Where you find the molecule.

3. Link your page to your online Science Portfolio

Resources
These pages have drawings of some organic molecules:

Pattern Matching: Organic Molecules
    http://www.biologylessons.sdsu.edu/classes/lab6/lab6.html

    A list of small organic molecules
    http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/e16/16b.htm

    Chemical composition of microbes
    http://www.bact.wisc.edu/themicrobialworld/chemoc.html