Molecule of the Week
December 25, 2006

This molecule was originally selected on December 22, 2003

Regarding this week’s selected substance:

The candles that decorate your holiday table might be made of paraffin, a waxy mixture of saturated, straight-chain hydrocarbon compounds. One of the shorter members of the paraffin group is n-eicosane (shown), which has a 20-carbon backbone. “Paraffin” is derived from the Latin words for “not much” and “affinity”, a reference to its chemical unreactivity.

Paraffin

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