6: Properties of Organic Compounds

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Hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and a number of other elements also bond strongly to carbon, and a tremendous variety of compounds can result. In the early days of chemistry such compounds were obtained from plants or animals rather than being synthesized by chemists, and so they came to be known as organic compounds. This distinguished them from the inorganic compounds available from nonliving portions of the earth’s surface. Today literally millions of carbon compounds can be synthesized in laboratories, and so this historical distinction is no longer valid. Nevertheless, the study of carbon compounds is still referred to as organic chemistry.

6.1: Prelude to Organic Compounds
Hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and a number of other elements also bond strongly to carbon, and a tremendous variety of compounds can result. In the early days of chemistry such compounds were obtained from plants or animals rather than being synthesized by chemists, and so they came to be known as organic compounds. This distinguished them from the inorganic compounds available from nonliving portions of the earth’s surface.
6.2: Organic Compounds- Hydrocarbons
The hydrocarbons contain only hydrogen and carbon. They provide the simplest examples of how catenation, combined with carbon’s valence of 4, gives rise to a tremendous variety of molecular structures, even with only two elements involved
6.3: Alkanes
Most of the hydrocarbons in petroleum belong to a family of compounds called the alkanes, in which all carbon atoms are linked by single bonds.
6.4: Cycloalkanes
Cycloalkanes are characterized by a ring of carbon atoms.
6.5: Properties of Alkanes
- 6.5.1: Table of Straight Chain Alkanes
6.6: Organic Compounds-Some Additional Classes

Contributors

Ed Vitz (Kutztown University), John W. Moore (UW-Madison), Justin Shorb (Hope College), Xavier Prat-Resina (University of Minnesota Rochester), Tim Wendorff, and Adam Hahn.