A High school student from Oklahoma has just light upon something completely unexpected in chemistry . He find out that carbon , which usually only form four chemical bond , can end up take form a mind - boggling seven bond certificate , a higher number than ever considered potential for the constituent .

High school chemistry tells us all about the versatility of carbon . You might recall that carbon copy is missing four electrons in its outer shell so it ’s looking to form up to four bonds . Having this power makes it very useful as the basis for anything biologic . These four alliance are found in so many authoritative molecules , from DNA   to intoxicant to baseball diamond . But that ’s not the whole story .

There are exception , situations in which carbon paper can do more than four bonds . The element in those cases is nickname   hypercarbon . In the 1950s , it was shown that atomic number 6 can sometimes form five bonds . And in 2016 , a German team showed how to make asix - bond hypercarbon . This newspaper was the start of this find . Dr AK Fazlur Rahman   was giving a lecture on carbon at Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics in Oklahoma City . He used the 2016 paper to challenge his students on thinking about the possibility of carbon with more than six bond . Unexpectedly , one of his scholar , George Wang ,   did more than just ideate   it . He indicate that six was not a strict limit . It was potential to have a carbon paper with seven Bond .

As reported inInverse , Dr Rahman ask to see Mr Wang ’s figuring and not only did it show the stability of the seven - bond constellation of carbon paper and H , It also designate that an eight - bond version with just the same two element would be unstable . These reckoning are now published in theJournal of Molecular Modeling .

The squad show that it is possible to build a Great Pyramid human body made of atomic number 6 speck . The base would be a hexagonal carbon paper ring and the acme would join with all six of these atomic number 6 . Since every carbon would also link to a hydrogen atom it ends up that the apex carbon copy has seven Bond .

Molecules sporting hypercarbon atom are super unusual compounds , so this could turn out to be revolutionary . Such structures could extend to a completely new approach to constitutive chemical science . atomic number 1 depot is a potential covering . Modern avenues for chemical substance deductive reasoning are also possibility mentioned in the paper . Exciting stuff .

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