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It is really much like putting
together the old six-block Chinese puzzle. The chemist can work better
if he has a picture of what he is working with. Now his unit is the
molecule, which is too small even to analyze with the microscope, no
matter how high powered. So he makes up a sort of diagram of the
molecule, and since he knows the number of atoms and that they are
somehow attached to one another, he represents each atom by the first
letter of its name and the points of attachment or bonds by straight
lines connecting the atoms of the different elements. Now it is one of
the rules of the game that all the bonds must be connected or hooked up
with atoms at both ends, that there shall be no free hands reaching out
into empty space. Carbon, for instance, has four bonds and hydrogen only
one. They unite, therefore, in the proportion of one atom of carbon to
four of hydrogen, or CH_{4}, which is methane or marsh gas and obviously
the simplest of the hydrocarbons. But we have more complex hydrocarbons
such as C_{6}H_{14}, known as hexane.


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