Understanding Organic Chemistry

The Aim of this instructable is to give a light overview of Organic chemistry including; Formulae, structure and identification to aid anyone who is interested in or is taking this subject.

Organic Chemistry is a subsect of chemistry which involves organic substances and their properties, structures and compositions.  The substances contained in the subject can have Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Sulfur, the Halogens and a variety of other molecules contained in their molecular formulae.

It is important to distinguish between Organic and Inorganic chemistry as there are carbon containing substances that are regarded as "inorganic", such chemicals and ions include;
- Carbonates (CO3 [2-])
- Hydrogen Carbonates (HCO3 [-])
- Oxides of Carbon (CO, CO2)
- Cyanos and nitriles (CN [-])
Apart from these few (plus a few more not listed) most other carbon containing compounds are organic.

By the end of this instructable you should be able to name and identify the molecule shown below

Step 1 Hydrocarbons

Hydrocarbons are a set of organic compounds which contain only Hydrogen and Carbon (as the name implies).  This set of chemicals are very important in understanding organic chemistry and come in a variety of different forms.
In inorganic chemisty the combination of 2 different element generally produces only 1, 2 or 3 different molecules but in organic chemistry the combination of just Carbon and Hydrogen can produce MILLIONS of different molecules!
For ALL hydrocarbons there is a general molecular formula this is;
"CxHy" where x and y are the amounts of carbon and hydrogen respectively
Another rule all hydrocarbons obey is that any carbon atom must have four bonds to fill its outer shell (it has four valence electrons) this can be done by using Hydrogen atoms or by using double or even triple bonds between cabon atoms.
The simple fact that there are so many different hydrocarbons means that a standardised form of identifying them is necessary, this is called the IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) nomenclature; (Refer to image one)

Comments

[nieks]

I like that you want to introduce people to chemistry, and try to make them understand the names given to these molecules, but this isn't a guide to understanding organic chemistry. A better name would probably be: 'explanation of the nomenclature of easy hydrocarbons' but that would probably scare of most people on this site, and the rest probably knows about it already :p

[antibatman]

Just a quick correction, benzene is not the same thing as cyclohexane. Benzene has a formula of C6H6 while cyclohexane has a formula of C6H14. Oh, and toluene is benzene with a methyl branch, not cyclohexane with a methyl branch.

[Ro]x[as]

 It's a nice overview of the nomenclature of organic compounds, but that's not, in itself, "organic chemistry".  Perhaps the title is a bit misleading, but I think it would be good for high school or introductory organic chemistry students as a reference to naming this stuff.

[lemonie]

Where does "cyclic hexane" come from? Cyclohexatriene surely?

L

[Tombini]

Sorry for the typo it should be CycloHexane
Ill just fix that up...

[lemonie]

Since you went this far, how about adding stereoisomerism - Alanine would do it as an example?

L

[Tombini]

If I was to do that I would also add in halogenation reactions (probably refering to the synthesis of tetrachloromethane).  But at the moment I have alot on my plate (exams) and that's why I was querying anyone if they wanted it to become a collaboration.

[PKM]

As a former organic chem student, I would find this quite useful as a "cheat sheet" or revision/reference material, but perhaps less so for explaining the subject.  It's got plenty of facts, but doesn't actually explain much of the detail.  For example, you reference structural isomerism of butene but don't go on to explain the structures of but-1-ene and but-2-ene and their different properties, or indeed exactly what "isomer" means.

I'd read more of these if you wrote them, if only because I enjoy making people think I have magic powers by reading IUPAC systematic names and decoding them :)

I only noticed one obvious typo, you give the formula of alkanes as CnHn+2 where it should be CnH2n+2.

[Tombini]

Do you reckon it would be a good idea to make this a collaboration?
That way we could all improve the instructable in the areas we see are lacking...

[lemonie]

It's text-book stuff, but since I wouldn't think Tombini would have copied it out of a text book it's well presented. E / Z bond configuration is more interesting, stereoisomerism etc....

L