Organic Chemistry

A new unit, woohoo! This is veery interesting so far

Organic chemistry is the study of carbon compounds

-Carbon forms A LOT of covalent bonds (miiiiiiilllions, in fact)

While there are only less than 100 000 non-organic compounds, there are over 17 000 000 organic compounds!

Carbon compounds can form chains, rings or branches. The simplest organic compounds are made of carbon and hydrogen. The simplest is CH4, which is methane. It just has one C, and thus has 4 H's to fill all the bonds of the C.

Saturated compounds have no double or triple bond. Compounds with only single bonds are called Alkanes and ALWAYS end in -ane

Now, let's learn how to name these! There are three categories of organic compounds:

1) Straight chains

2) Cyclic chains

3) Aromatics

Today we'll do only straight chains!

Some ground rules for naming straight chains:

1) Circle the longest continuous chain and name this as 'the base chain'

2) Number the base chain so side chains have the lowest possible numbers

3) Name each side chain using the -yl ending

4) Give each side chain the appropriate number

5) List side chains alphabetically

This'll all make much more sense through the examples!

Unfortunately, drawing out examples is a bit impossible on here, so I won't be able to show step by step... but I will explain it!

The first thing you would do is circle the longest possible chain (without repeating the same one). In this case, there are a few options, but lets take the simplest one, which is the bottom three (the straight row). This row has THREE and the prefix for three is 'prop' and since it ends in -ane, give it the name propane for now. In this case, numbering it will work either way, because either way the side chain will be number 2. There is only 1 off the side chain, so the prefix before the -yl is 'eth', making it ethyl. You want to remember to number it though, so it's 2 ethyl. That means that the full name is 2 ethyl propane!

Congrats, you've just named your first piece of organic chemistry!