Chapter 221: Two in Ten Odds? Enough
Carbon had always displayed all kinds of remarkable properties.
Research into carbon had never stopped, either. In the history of the Nobel Prizes alone, there had been quite a few awards directly related to carbon. The well-known example was graphene, whose discoverers, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010.
Then, in the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Robert Curl, Harold Kroto, and Richard Smalley won for discovering fullerene, or C60.
Beyond those direct discoveries, there had also been a great many important findings related to carbon.
As for why carbon could exhibit so many properties, it mainly came down to its unique atomic structure and chemical properties.
First, in terms of electron configuration, a carbon atom had six electrons, with an electron configuration of 1s2s2p.
This allowed carbon to form four covalent bonds because it had four unpaired valence electrons that could pair with other atoms.
It was precisely for this reason that carbon could form so many structures. It had also become the foundation of life, making all life on Earth carbon-based life.
"However, so far, no theory has been able to completely explain carbon's properties."
In the laboratory, Xiao Yi held a pair of tweezers, which gripped a piece of nanoporous carbon material. His gaze was fixed on it.
He silently activated Material Mastery, and his vision entered the microscopic realm.
By simulating electrons moving in and out of those pores, he occasionally observed some electrons suddenly speeding up, flying straight through the pores as though they had sprouted wings.
Even in the microscopic realm, he could not determine what had caused those electrons to accelerate.
The finest level of detail his microscopic vision could reach did not extend to the electron level. As for