CHON - Four Elements Chart the Laws of All Chemistry
March 23, 1942 Life Article

March 23, 1942 Life [Table of Contents] Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early technology. See articles from Life magazine, published 1883-1972. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.

My daughter dragged me to an estate sale last weekend, and while there I found a stack of World War II era Life magazines, many of which had some useful articles on chemistry, electronics, and other subjects pertaining to technology being used to fight the battle against Communism, Nazism, Socialism, and other "ism's." This 2-page spread titled "CHON - Four Elements Chart the Laws of All Chemistry" appeared in the March 23, 1942 issue. Today, such a diagram would be called an infographic. It explains the relationship that Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen (CHON) has with all the essential products and reactions in our everyday world. One modification to the article might be to increase the claim that only 20 out of the known 92 elements (at the time) comprise the makeup of the "vast bulk" of matter. While it doesn't explicitly name the 20, some elements like lithium (batteries), gallium, and arsenic (GaAs) now have a very large presence in the world's economy and might not have been so important in 1942.

CHON - Four Elements Chart the Laws of All Chemistry

The poetic formula CHON embodies the four elements most profoundly involved in the chemistry of man and his planet. One or another or all of them are compounded in almost everyone of the substances in the earth's surface. By themselves, they produce whole families of complex and wonderful chemicals. With minute quantities of other elements, they elaborate into life itself. Because there are few chemical operations and compounds, in industry or in nature, in which they are not involved, this diagram of the interaction of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen plots the broad outlines of the science of chemistry.

Chemistry's basic concern is with the fact that all of the infinitely various substances in the universe are compounded from a list of only 92 elements. The vast bulk of matter is, in fact, made from only 20 of the elements. Elements are, like the diamond crystal form of carbon, simple substances that cannot be broken down into components. Elements may exist in mixtures, as do nitrogen and oxygen in air, without losing their identity. Chemistry's interest begins when two or more elements merge their identities in a compound and therewith become an entirely new and different substance. Thus the two gases, oxygen and hydrogen, compound as water.

In reaction with water, the universal solvent, non-metallic and metallic elements cleave the water molecule apart, producing acids and bases respectively. The active factors in these two diametrically opposed compounds are the electrified fragments of the water molecule, the positive hydrogen ion and the negative hydrogen-oxygen ion. When an acid and a base are mixed together, the water fragments reunite and the metal and nonmetal compound to form a salt.

Oxygen, the most active element, combines with almost all other elements in the fundamental process called oxidation, which is familiar as fire, rusting and corrosion. End compounds of oxidation are solid silica (SiO₂), a chief constituent of earth's crust, liquid water and the gas, carbon dioxide.

Compounds containing carbon and hydrogen make up their own family of organic chemicals, complete with gases, liquids, solids, acids, bases and salts. Carbon atoms have the unique property of being able to join in chains, side chains and rings. The nature of an organic compound, therefore, depends not only on the number of atoms of each element present in it but on the architecture of its molecule. Within the family of organic chemicals are three complete subfamilies, the hydrocarbons, carbohydrates and proteins. Hydrocarbons are the raw material of the coal, oil and synthetic-chemical industries. Carbohydrates are the sugars, starches and fibers synthesized by plants. In the family of proteins chemistry yields to biology, the study of living things.

Posted February 9, 2022