The candles that decorate your holiday table might be made of paraffin, a waxy mixture of saturated, straight-chain hydrocarbon compounds. One of the shorter members of the paraffin group is聽n-eicosane (shown), which has a 20-carbon backbone. 鈥淧araffin鈥� is derived from the Latin words for 鈥渘ot much鈥� and 鈥渁ffinity鈥�, a reference to its chemical unreactivity.
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