How does carbon bond with other atoms?
Carbon has a number of unique properties that influence how it behaves and how it bonds with other atoms:
1 ) Carbon has four valence electrons. Carbon can thus form a maximum of four bonds with other atoms as depicted in Figure 1.
![figure 1: Carbon is tetravalent – it can form bonds with four other atoms](https://physicsteacher.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/image-68.png)
2 ) Carbon can bond strongly with other carbon atoms forming single (—), double (=) or triple (≡) bonds as shown in Figure 2.
![figure 2: An example of carbon chains](https://physicsteacher.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/image-69.png)
3 ) Carbon can also form bonds with other atoms such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and halogens. Figure 3 show two organic compounds. The first one contains a hydroxyl ion (alcohol), and the second one contains a halogen (haloalkane).
![figure 3: Carbon can bond with other elements (for example, oxygen and halogens)](https://physicsteacher.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/image-70.png)
4 ) Carbon can bond to form straight and branched molecules, as shown in Figure 4.
![](https://physicsteacher.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/image-71.png)