All mater is composed of a small handful of basic building blocks called ATOMS. (Although atoms are built from even more basic blocks called electrons, protons, and neutrons, and THESE are believed to be built out of even MORE basic things called quarks.) There are now (in 1991) 109 different types of atoms, 92 of which occur naturally. These atoms combine in an infinite number of ways into more complicated structures called MOLECULES. For example, common table salt is a simple molecule composed of one atom of sodium and one atom of chlorine both bonded to each other by electrical forces. If an molecule contains carbon, it is called organic. A molecule without carbon is inorganic.
