Building Blocks

There are over 12,000 (and counting) different LEGO bricks out there.  That allows for quite a bit of building variety.  However, what's really mind-staggering to me is the diversity of things made from a different set of building blocks.  This set includes 91 different pieces ranging from Hydrogen to Uranium.

Now you may say, "Wait, there are 118 elements, and Uranium isn't number 91."  Well, for now I'm only considering naturally occurring elements.  And as long as we're throwing out man-made elements, we may as well focus on just a couple of specific elements.  Let's take a look at carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.

74% of our galaxy is composed of hydrogen.  1% is oxygen, and 0.5% is carbon.  (24% is helium, and the other 0.5% is all the other elements.)  So helium aside, our galaxy is built mainly of three building blocks.  So what exactly can you make from these three things?  Just about everything.

Take you, for example.  Your body is composed of 65% oxygen, 18% carbon, and 10% hydrogen.  (The rest of you is very small amounts of N, Ca, and K, with trace amounts of other elements.)

This, of course, all comes from what we eat.  Starches, sugars, fats, carbohydrates, lipids, vitamins, oils - they're all made out of nothing but carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.  Even many of the flavors we enjoy are made of these three elements.  Vanilla flavoring is C₈H₈O₃.  Cinnamon is C₉H₈O.  Pears, bananas, oranges, pineapples, and apricots - they're all a chain of carbon atoms with two oxygens and a bunch of hydrogens.  They differ only in how long the carbon chain is.  Spearmint (C₁₀H₁₄O) is the mirror image of the molecule responsible for rye flavoring.

Carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen seem innocent enough, right?  We eat them, we breathe them, we ARE them.  However, assembled correctly, they could be quite dangerous.  You wouldn't want to drink, for example, hydrogen peroxide.  H₂O₂ is just water with an extra oxygen, but it's highly toxic.  Xylene, a ring of carbons with two oxygens tagged on, will corrode just about any non-polar compound.  Alcohols, fossil fuels, solvents - all are made of C, H, and O.  Throw in a couple of nitrogen atoms and you can make dynamite, plastic explosives, and nitroglycerin.

Most of our clothes are made from either cotton or polyester.  Cotton is made of cellulose, which is a chain of glucose molecules, which is made of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen.  Polyester, polypropylene, polyethylene, and polystyrene make up clothing, milk jugs, trash bags, pop bottles, styrofoam, carpet, and much more.  And, of course, all of it is nothing but carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen.

We've barely even scratched the surface of what you can make with these three elements.  Don't even get me started on the composition of stars, and nebulas.  The point is, the universe is amazing.  The fact that things work out so perfectly is incredible.  "Coincidence" is pretty great, huh?