Carbonyl Compounds

We are now directing our own learning. We have two lessons to find out as much as we can about aldehydes and ketones:

One idea was to use the aldehyde (or ketone) hexagon and select another hexagon at random. The work out a method to tell the two organic compounds apart.

Optical Isomerism

The challenge was to make an isomer of butanol which had two possible structures, yet both had the same structural formula:

These are called enantiomers or optical isomers. They are very interesting compounds and important in nature. However, the only physical property that can be used to tell them apart is their ability to rotate plane-polarised light - one isomer rotates it clockwise, while the other rotates it anti-clockwise.

Reflux or Distillation?

1-propanol can be oxidised to either propanal (an aldehyde) or propanoic acid, using the same reagents and equipment. The challenge today was to make both propanal and propanoic acid in two experiments, using the same chemicals and equipment. We need to confirm the production of propanal using Benedict's Solution.

Alcohols - Isomerism and Classification

Our introduction to alcohols revisited a couple of key concepts from last year:

1. Make, draw, name and classify all of the structural isomers of C₅H₁₂O which contain the alcohol functional group.
2. Devise a procedure to distinguish between the three classes of non-cyclic alcohols

Reactions of Hydrocarbons

Markovnikov's Rule

Alkenes - isomerism and nomenclature

If a compound has a C=C bond, it contains the alkene functional group. Alkenes have a few different properties and reactions to alkanes because of the double bond (which is unable to rotate). Because atoms/groups can be added to the carbons in the double bond without first having to remove other atoms/groups, we call alkenes unsaturated hydrocarbons.

Alkanes - isomerism and nomenclature

Alkanes are the most simple of organic compounds. They are saturated hydrocarbons. They exhibit structural isomerism, and cyclic alkanes may have geometric isomers as well.

Organic Chemistry Hexagons

Each student received 12 hexagons - one for each major functional group that we will learn about. Here is what we need to do with them over the next few weeks: