Carbon atoms, arranged one way, form a soft graphite. Arranged another way, they form super hard diamonds. Arranged another way (along with a few other things), they form you — because carbon is a primary component of all living things. Carbon is so versatile because of its four covalent bonds, which allow it to bond with hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and other elements.
You shed carbon from your body when you exhale carbon dioxide (C02), and plants do the opposite. Plants breathe in C02, which is then broken up into carbon to make more plants and oxygen as a waste product. Combustion is the process of oxygen in the air reuniting with the carbon in the tree to form CO2. Climate change is the result of ancient buried plants being dug up and burned for energy, which releases a whole lot of long—buried carbon back into the atmosphere as C02. (The diameter is calculated from the van der Waals radius.)
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