158 Miracles Ahead! 



Fabulous New Wealth 



Chemistry has ninety-two basic elements to work with in 

 making the thousands of useful articles in the world today. 

 Of the ninety-two elements twelve alone make up more than 

 99 per cent of the known parts of the earth the atmosphere, 

 the earth's crust, and the ocean. Oxygen and silicon, which 

 occur mainly as silica or silicon dioxide in sand and quartz, 

 are by far the most widely distributed. They form together 

 about three-quarters of the materials of the earth's surface. 

 Aluminum is the most common metal, occurring in granite 

 (feldspar) and in clay. Carbon, which is the chief element in 

 substances associated with living things, forms less than .02 

 per cent of the material of the earth's crust. 



The Great Compounds 



Analysis of certain compounds such as cellulose (C 6 H 10 

 O 5 ), the chief organic compound in wood pulp and cotton; 

 ethyl alcohol (C 2 H 5 OH), the active principle in intoxicat- 

 ing liquors; eugenol (C 10 H 12 O 2 ), which gives cloves their 

 taste and odor; and vinegar, which is dilute acetic acid (CH 3 

 CO-OH) establishes this important fact: all are composed 

 of just three elements carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen but 

 a complicated arrangement of the atoms of these elements 

 into molecules produces the different compounds above. 



There are hundreds of such compounds. In fact, the com- 

 pounds of carbon total anywhere from 225,000 to 500,000, 

 while the known compounds of all elements other than car- 

 bon amount to no more than twenty-six thousand. Organic 

 chemistry, the study of the compounds of carbon, touches 

 every phase of our modern civilization. The cell, which is 

 the unit of all living matter, is made up of compounds of car- 

 bon. Our food, textiles for clothing, wood for furniture and 



