Why is H²O harmless, but H²O²(hydrogen peroxide) very lethal? How does the addition of a single oxygen atom bring such a huge change?
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Think of the atoms as letters, with which you make words – and the words are completely different meanings than the letters themselves. And the sake letters, arranged differently, also mean different things.
So its not only the letters, but how many and how they are arranged.
Carbon is harmless, nitrogen is harmless, add them together it becomes CN – and you just got the cyanide radical that will kill you very dead very fast. Add a little hidrogen to carbon – CH4 – you got methane. Do that to Nitrogen – you got ammonia which is *very* different.
Think of a compound as its own new thing, not the mix of others.
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