Which of the following statements best describes a characteristic shared by all organic compounds?
They contain carbon atoms bonded to other elements.
Organic compounds are the compounds of carbon. The one feature common to all of them is that they contain carbon atoms covalently bonded to other elements, mainly hydrogen, and often oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur or halogens, as well as to other carbon atoms.
Carbon can form so many such compounds because of catenation (its ability to bond with other carbon atoms into chains and rings) and its tetravalency, which lets each carbon atom form four covalent bonds.
Many organic compounds are insoluble in water, for example petrol, kerosene, wax and oils. Nitrogen is present only in some of them, such as amines and proteins; methane, ethanol and glucose contain no nitrogen.
Organic compounds also exist in all three states at room temperature: methane is a gas, ethanol is a liquid and glucose is a solid. So the characteristic shared by all organic compounds is the presence of carbon atoms bonded to other elements.
Hence, They contain carbon atoms bonded to other elements.
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