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.
Period 2 element
Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium and oxygen and is the second most abundant element in the human body by mass after oxygen, the third most abundant by number of atoms. There are an almost infinite number of compounds that contain carbon due to carbon's ability to form long stable chains of C — C bonds. The simplest carbon-containing molecules are the hydrocarbons, which contain carbon and hydrogen, although they sometimes contain other elements in functional groups. Hydrocarbons are used as fossil fuels and to manufacture plastics and petrochemicals. All organic compounds, those essential for life, contain at least one atom of carbon. When combined with oxygen and hydrogen, carbon can form many groups of important biological compounds including sugars, lignans, chitins, alcohols, fats, and aromatic esters, carotenoids and terpenes. With nitrogen it forms alkaloids, and with the addition of sulfur also it forms antibiotics, amino acids, and rubber products. With the addition of phosphorus to these other elements, it forms DNA and RNA, the chemical-code carriers of life, and adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the most important energy-transfer molecule in all living cells.