Life Made in the Lab: The Miller-Urey Experiment
Maia Poon
Organic chemistry is the branch of chemistry specializing in the study of carbon-containing compounds. These compounds are called organic compounds since all living things contain carbon as well as water. Carbon has the ability to bind with many different combinations of atoms. Thus, organic compounds range from small molecules like methane (CH4), with just five atoms, to complicated molecules with thousand of atoms like proteins. Methane is a greenhouse gas, and proteins are the building blocks of life.
In the early 1800s, chemists started to create simple compounds in the laboratory by mixing elements under specific conditions. However, scientists believed organic compounds could not be artificially made and could only be found in living organisms. Vitalism was the belief that that there was a life force outside of science’s physical and chemical laws. It was disproved after several organic compounds, such as urea, which is present in animal urine, were created in the laboratory.
Leave a Reply