BIO 9
Organic vs. Inorganic Summary Write
Name:
After reading the following article, write a neat and legible one paragraph summary on the back of this handout.
Inorganic vs. Organic Compounds
The most common differentiation to help distinguish between organic and
inorganic compounds used to be the fact that organic compounds result from
the activity of living beings, whereas inorganic compounds are either the result
of natural processes unrelated to any life form or the result of human
experimentation in the laboratory.
But this definition is not strictly true because these days organic compounds can be artificially
created by human beings, and moreover organic compounds have been found in outer space
where there are no known living beings. A more acceptable difference pertains to the salt making
property of inorganic compounds which is absent in organic compounds. But this definition too is
not sacrosanct as both these compounds are sometimes known to buck the trend when it comes
to the presence or absence of this property.
Some might hold that organic compounds have carbon while inorganic do not. This too is not one
hundred percent true. A more tenable explanation is that organic compounds have carbonhydrogen bonds, while inorganic do not. This is largely true and therefore is a real distinguishing
characteristic.
Yet another difference is the fact that inorganic compounds contain metal atoms, whereas
organic compounds do not. This too is not one hundred percent true. Maybe one could just take
the word of organic and inorganic chemists on what constitutes an organic or inorganic
compound. Organic compounds are biological and inorganic are mineral in nature.
Another way of bringing out the difference is to point out that organic compounds are part of a
class of chemical compounds, the molecules of which contain carbon and hydrogen. By this logic
carbide, carbonates, carbon oxides, and elementary carbon do not qualify to be organic
compounds. Inorganic compounds come mainly from mineral sources of non biological origin. The
modern view of inorganic compounds believes that inorganic compounds mostly comprise of
metal containing compounds even if they happen to exist in living organisms.
Thus we see that what constitutes organic or inorganic compounds has changed over a period of
time, and there happens to be no water tight compartments which will differentiate the two.
However one can always differentiate between organic compounds and inorganic compounds.