An overwhelming majority of what we eat is made from plants and animals. This means that composition of our almost entire food is chemicals from the realm of organic chemistry (carbon-based large molecules). Water and salt are two prominent examples of non-organic foodstuffs - which come from the realm of inorganic chemistry. Beside some medicines is there any more non-organic foods? Can we eat rocks, salts, metals, oxides… and I just don’t know that?
I think that it still fits. People don’t usually consider amorphous carbon, diamonds, graphite or fullerene as “organic”, even if carbon-based.
I have to admit, chemistry has been a while and I don’t remember the exact definitions of organic vs inorganic chemistry, so I just went off the “carbon-based” in the OP.
The textbook definition is something like “carbon covalently linked to other junk”. (The other junk is usually hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur.) So it usually excludes [macro]molecules made exclusively of carbon, like those.
Charcoal and activated charcoal are not amorphous carbon compounds because their structures contain other elements than just carbon.
That’s a fair point - you’re right that typically charcoal does have bits of hydrogen and oxygen, to the point that its empirical formula is around C₇H₄O, so by textbook definition it is organic. However I think that it falls into a grey area due to the relatively small amount of the “other components”, and perhaps because of the structure?
Im finding that people have strong opinion on what qualifies as organic. Haha.
I think it’s cool I can talk to people about chemistry outside of work tho. None of my friends understand anything about what I do for a living.