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Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are biomolecules that serves many functions for life, main one being providing energy source.

What do you normally think of when people say carbohydrates or carbs?

Carbohydrates are one of the three main biological molecules. We get biological molecules from the food we eat. What are the other two?

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This shows different types of carbohydrates. How many different types are there?

"Mono" means 1. Which one of these types is a "monosaccharide"?

"Poly" means many. Which one of these is a "polysaccharide"?

Type B is a disaccharide. So what do you think "di" means?

So there are three types of carbohydrates (or "saccharides")

Monosaccharides have 1 structure. Disaccharides have 2 structures. Polysaccharides have many structures.

Here is a chain of monosaccharides. How many monosaccharides can you see in the image?

If you put four monosaccharides together, what do you get?

For example

The carbohydrate glucose is a monosaccharide. If you put many glucose molecules together, you get a polysaccharide.

One of these saccharides is sometimes referred to as "simple sugars". Which one?

Carbohydrates are also referred to as "saccharides" or as "sugars"

Monosaccharides, for example glucose or fructose, are also known as simple sugars because they consist of only one structure.

So what actually are these structures?

This image has zoomed in on a glucose monosaccharide, so you can see what it's made of.

The structure has a kind of ring in the middle, which is highlighted in orange in this image. Which letter mostly makes up that ring?

$C$ stands for the element carbon

So we call these structures carbon ring structures.

Glucose $C_6H_{12}O_6$ , fructose $C_6H_{12}O_6$ , glycogen $C_{24}H_{42}O_{21}$ and starch $C_6H_{10}O_5$ are all examples of carbohydrates. Pick the 3 elements that all these carbohydrates contain.

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Summary! Carbohydrates are one of the three main biological molecules

The other two are proteins and lipids (fats).

Carbohydrates are also known as "saccharides" or just "sugars"

Examples include glucose, fructose, starch and glycogen.

There are 3 types of saccharides

Monosaccharides have 1 carbon ring structure. Disaccharides have 2 carbon ring structures. Polysaccharides have many carbon ring structures.

Glucose and fructose...

are examples of monosaccharides or "simple sugars".

Glycogen and starch...

are examples of polysaccharides.

If you combine multiple monosaccharides, like glucose...

you get a polysaccharide.

All carbohydrates are made up of the same three elements

$C$ for carbon, $H$ for hydrogen and $O$ for oxygen. For example, fructose $C_6H_{12}O_6$ and glycogen $C_{24}H_{42}O_{21}$