![]() ![]() Organic fertilizer, such as cow manure, is organic in the original sense it is derived from living organisms. However, this division seems more reasonable when we consider that of tens of millions of compounds that have been characterized, the overwhelming majority are carbon compounds. It may seem strange that we divide chemistry into two branches-one that considers compounds of only one element and one that covers the 100-plus remaining elements. Today organic chemistry is the study of the chemistry of the carbon compounds, and inorganic chemistry is the study of the chemistry of all other elements. The vital force theory gradually went away as chemists learned that they could make many organic compounds in the laboratory. This result led to a series of experiments in which a wide variety of organic compounds were made from inorganic starting materials. Instead, he found the product to be urea (NH 2CONH 2), a well-known organic material readily isolated from urine. What he expected is described by the following equation. He reacted silver cyanate (AgOCN) and ammonium chloride (NH 4Cl), expecting to get ammonium cyanate (NH 4OCN). The vital force theory began to decline in 1828, when the German chemist Friedrich Wöhler synthesized urea from inorganic starting materials. For many years, scientists thought organic compounds could be made by only living organisms because they possessed a vital force found only in living systems. Compounds isolated from nonliving systems, such as rocks and ores, the atmosphere, and the oceans, were labeled inorganic. Scientists of the 18th and early 19th centuries studied compounds obtained from plants and animals and labeled them organic because they were isolated from “organized” (living) systems.
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