1.1 Important Elements

We've all seen a periodic table and know that its squares represent the 118 known chemical elements. While 118 is certainly a lot, we don't have to concern ourselves with most of them. For one, only about 92-94 (the number isn't precise) occur naturally, but most of these are metals and metals are primarily the domain of inorganic chemistry. Better yet, of the elements we will know about, some of them have similar properties (ones that belong to any single column of the periodic table) and a few can even be considered almost identical for our purposes.

The most important elements for organic chemistry are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Elements that are also important for more complex organic molecules, such as those in living cells, are sulfur and phosphorus. We will start with just these, and later we'll talk about chlorine and its sisters, important for some medicines and poisons, as well as a handful of metals like sodium that occasionally turn up around organic molecules.

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