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.
Atomic carbon
The trivial name "monocarbon" is the most commonly used and preferred IUPAC name. The systematic name "carbon", a valid IUPAC name, is constructed according to the compositional nomenclature. However, as a compositional name, it does not distinguish between different forms of pure carbon. The systematic name "λ-methane", also valid IUPAC name, is constructed according to the substitutive nomenclature. Along with "monocarbon", this name does distinguish the titular compound as they derived using structural information about the molecule. To better reflect its structure, free atomic carbon is often written as [C]. λ-methylium () is the ion resulting from the gain of  by atomic carbon.