Dr. Joseph A. Schwarcz is a chemistry professor and the founding director of the McGill Office for Science and Society. He has an article at the McGill Office for Science and Society on May 21, 2025 titled What is a molecule? which clearly and succinctly explains that topic. He said:
“By making careful observations of chemical reactions, August Kekule concluded that atoms have a characteristic number of ‘hooks’ that they can use to join together, and that the carbon atom has four such hooks which came to be called ‘bonds.’ Then in 1874, August von Hofmann built the first ever model of a molecule using balls to represent atoms and sticks for bonds. His model of methane was a planar structure with a carbon atom joined to four hydrogen atoms. This was refined by van’t Hoff who concluded that molecules are three dimensional and the carbon in methane is at the center of a tetrahedron with the hydrogens at the four corners.
As shown above, a methane molecule, CH4, consists of a carbon atom linked to four hydrogen atoms.
He also mentions that Catharine Sugrue, an Ottawa-based holistic nutritionist, had claimed:
“margarine is about one molecule away from plastic”
Joe discussed that claim in an earlier article on March 20, 2017 titled A holistic nutritional rockstar’s rocky science.
On April 18, 2025 I blogged about A sticky story on the glue you lick to seal envelopes. And on April 10, 2023 I blogged about Quack Quack: the threat of pseudoscience, a 2022 book by Dr. Joe Schwarcz.
The ball model of methane came from here at Wikimedia Commons.
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