Atomic Orbitals@Uilebheist @cstross Glucose is C6H12O6, isn't it?
Charlie Stross@geoglyphentropy @Uilebheist Yes, just like a Boeing 737 is roughly 29,000kg of aluminium, plus a bit of titanium and carbon fibre composites.
@cstross @Uilebheist My chemistry is so rusty it isn't funny!
David Nash@geoglyphentropy @cstross @Uilebheist Former chemist here.
The atom counts in C6H12O6 are correct: each glucose molecule contains six carbon atoms, 12 hydrogen atoms, etc.
This is likely how you'd encounter it in a Chemistry 101 level of class, where you're mostly dealing with fairly simple reactions, like "how much carbon dioxide [CO2] and water [H2O] do you get when you burn glucose?" For reactions like those, just knowing the atom counts is fine.
For more specific reactions (like ones affecting just one part of the glucose molecule), or for visualizing how the atoms are connected, a more detailed representation is required. See, e.g. the structural diagrams in the Wikipedia article for glucose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose .
Those are the ones that ChatGPT and similar applications get totally, hilariously wrong a lot of the time.
@dpnash @geoglyphentropy @Uilebheist Yes, hence my point about a Boeing 737 being 29,000kg of impure aluminium. It *slightly* ignores the importance of structural configuration …!