Wednesday, January 31, 2007

the different forms of carbon

Graphite and Diamond are both polymorphs of carbon (there are other polymorphs). Although there share the same atom, carbon, they have very different structures and very different properties.

Graphite has a sheet like structure where the atoms are strongly bonded (covalent bond) within a 2-D plane and are only weakly bonded to the graphite sheets above and below. Diamond has a framework structure where the carbon atoms are bonded to other carbon atoms in 3-D.

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