General Characteristics
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Formulas and Terminology
Functions

General Characteristics

Introduction

Carbohydrates are oxyorganic compounds that generally, but not always, have a formula that is the multiple of CH2O. Thus, their name, carbohydrate.
Cx(H2O)y
C6(H2O)6 glucose
C6(H2O)6 fructose
C12(H2O)11 sucrose

Carbohydrates include simple sugar molecules and also complex carbohydrates and they are also called saccharides and as such can be sub-divided into the classes of monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides of which you will learn quite a bit as we go through the lesson.

Let's investigate that formula a little bit. It almost implies that these carbohydrates consist of a carbon bonded to a water molecule, some sort of a hydrated carbon atom. However, if you think about the way that carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms bond and how many bonds each is supposed to have, you can figure out pretty quickly that it's not possible for carbon and water to bond in this way.
CH2O or (CH2O)n
C¾H2O
|                  
¾ C ¾ H ¾ O ¾ H
|                 
?
or
|          
¾ C ¾ O ¾ H
|     |  
     H
?

 

Something closer to the truth is that the carbon bonds on one side to an -H and to the other side to an -OH. Since carbon has to have four bonds   this is, in a sense, part of the formula for a carbohydrate, carbon with hydrogen and an OH bonded to it also. You might even think that this could be written in this way as some sort of a polymer of HCOH, and that is getting closer to the truth, but that isn't quite right either.
|      
H ¾ C ¾ O ¾ H
|       
æ     H     ö
ç     |      ÷
ç ¾ C ¾ ÷
ç     |      ÷
ç     O      ÷
ç     |      ÷
  è     H      øn

In the pages of this section, we will look at the formulas of several simple carbohydrates to see what they do look like. We will talk about the terminology associated with these formulas. We will also talk about some of the important functions of carbohydrates.

 

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