UniVerses

Bonding

An electron whizzes at amazing speeds
through her orbit intensely steering,
heedless whether pace or place precedes
she’s focused on frenzied sphering.
A nucleophile nudges the skittle
and draws her with ionic charm
to an higher harmonic orbital
sparkling photons bruit the alarm.
Asudden, another atom appears
whose loosest electron too was whisked
to fluorescent quantum spheres
both oblivious to the coming tryst.
These atoms’ boundaries revolt
by an unseen enzyme aligned
‘til a quantum mechanical jolt
the electron pairs entwined
and now their orbit spans two suns
thus molecules are born from atoms.

Atoms bond with one another in several ways. Covalent bonds are those in which two or more atoms share electrons, which hold the atoms together in turn.

Covalent bonds link many of the molecules necessary for life, such as sugars, proteins and DNA. The making and breaking of these covalent bonds is the work of enzymes. Some enzymes break up molecules into pieces. Others assemble the pieces to make larger molecules.

The machinery of Life also depends on other forces between atoms and molecules, like ionic bonds and other forces that are subtler and which we can only detect indirectly. These weaker, yet vital Van der Waals forces include hydrogen bonds, hydrophobic forces and dipole interactions.

The molecules are the nouns that make up living cells, but the essence of life is not the substance, but the interactions between these molecules. The transient connections of forces choreograph the dynamics that make the dance of Life.

Like the twinkling, quirky behavior of quanta, the molecules of Life appear up close to behave randomly, but at a macro scale we see they are organized in such a way to create a living force whose very existence depends upon a Design that transcends the discrete components.

Could there be other forces at work of which we are unaware? Force fields that are subtler, and work over longer distances and/or time?

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