Food chemistry
Comprising 75% of the biological world and 80% of all food intake for human consumption, the most common known human carbohydrate is Sucrose. The simplest version of a carbohydrate is a monosaccharide which contains carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in a 1:2:1 ratio under a general formula of CHO where n is a minimum of 3. Glucose is an example of a monosaccharide as is fructose. Combine them in the picture shown to the right and you have sucrose, one of the more common sugar products around.
Aldose
Carbohydrates with more than 4 carbons exist in an equibrium between the closed ring, or cyclic form, and the open-chain form. Cyclic aldoses are usually drawn as Haworth projections, and open chain forms are commonly drawn as Fischer projections, both of which represent important stereochemical information about the forms they depict.