Chapter 3 - Organic Compounds – Part I

Goals
• To understand and recognize functional groups.
• To recognize alkanes, alkyl groups, and isomers.
• To name alkanes and their isomers.
• To understand conformations of alkanes.

Why?
Functional groups play a key role in organic reactions. Recognizing their structure will help you
in understanding their reactivity.

Naming of alkanes is important, since organic chemistry has it’s own “language” when it comes
to naming compounds. The knowledge of naming will help you then in the understanding of
alkanes.

Conformational analysis is important to understand certain reactions that we will investigate later
in this course.

Additional Resources
Practice Problems Online

Terms
Functional groups, name prefixes.
INTRODUCTION TO FUNCTIONAL GROUPS

Organic compounds are grouped into functional group families.

9 A functional group is a specific grouping of atoms.
9 A functional group is the site of most chemical reactivity of a molecule.

Let’s look at 3 molecules:

• Capillin is an antifungal agent found naturally
• Dactylyne is a marine natural product
• Ethinyl estradiol is a synthetic estrogen used in oral contraceptives

By the end of this lesson you will need to be able to recognize the functional groups present in
any given molecule.

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Table 1. Families most discussed and studied in CHM 2210.

Table 2. Some of the functional groups studied this semester and more in detail in CHM 2211.

Can you list any functional groups not listed here?

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Focusing on Hydrocarbons:

Alkanes contain only carbon-carbon single bonds. The principle sources of alkanes are natural
gas and petroleum. Alkanes have the general formula of CnH2n+2.

Smaller alkanes (C1 to C4) are gases at room temperature. Methane is a component of the
atmosphere of many planets, and here on earth it is the major component of natural gas. It is also
produced by primitive organisms called methanogens found in mud, sewage and cows’
stomachs.

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Alkenes contain one or more carbon-carbon double bonds

Ethene (ethylene) is a major industrial feedstock, and used in the production of ethanol, ethylene
oxide and the polymer polyethylene.

Propene (propylene) is also very important in industry(C3H6). It is used to make the polymer
polypropylene and is the starting material for acetone. Many alkenes occur naturally

Alkynes contain one or more carbon-carbon triple bonds

Aromatic hydrocarbons contain benzene-like stable structures (discussed later)

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Constitutional isomers

Isomers are different compounds with the same molecular formula. They can be different in
several ways, and it is critical that you understand the terms associated with isomers.

Constitutional isomers (structural isomers) different in their bonding sequence. Take butane as
an example.

CH3

CH3CH2CH2CH3 CH3CHCH3
n-butane isobutene
(a common, or trivial name)

These two compounds are isomers since they have the same molecular formula, specifically
constitutional isomers. Starting with n-pentane, CH3(CH2)3CH3, draw 2 other forms that are not
the same and also different from n-pentane.

What about methylcyclobutane, ? Is it an isomer of n-pentane?

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Alkyl groups

Alkyl groups are obtained by removing a hydrogen from an alkane

Often more than one alkyl group can be obtained from an alkane by removal of different kinds of
hydrogens.

More specifically:

Use this as a resource for the problems worked out in class today.
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