When it comes to organic compounds, we can see that they have a lot of structural diversity. Now here, we can say this is a result of carbon. Carbon can make very stable carbon-carbon bonds due to high bond energy and short bond length. This leads to the formation of chains, branched structures, and rings in organic compounds. So here let's just take a look at some of these examples of structural diversity.
If we take a look here, we have a hydrocarbon; it's composed of only carbons and hydrogens, and it is a straight chain. So we have these 4 carbons in a chain together, and they just have these hydrogens branching off of them. Well, they're not branching groups; they're coming off of the carbon. The carbons themselves are a straight chain. Now, if we take a look at the next one, we have these carbons in a straight chain, and now we have a carbon that's off of the main chain, that's a branching group. So here we'd have this CH3 portion as a branching group. And then finally, we have a ring, where the 4 carbons form a square here; they form a cyclic or ring structure.
So remember, carbon-carbon bonds can happen and form these different types of structurally diverse molecules or compounds because of high bond energy and short bond length.
