Organic Chemistry
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- Last Updated: Friday, 26 September 2025 01:08
- Published: Thursday, 10 October 2024 12:38
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Organic Chemistry
This branch of chemistry deals with all carbon containing compounds. By some defn, it should contain a C-H or C-C bond to be considered an organic compound. i.e CCl4, CO2, HCN (hydrogen Cyanide) are not considered organic (considered Inorganic), even though they all contain Carbon.
Khan Academy => https://www.khanacademy.org/science/organic-chemistry
Organic Chemistry Tutor (extremely popular channel on youtube with simple explanation of everything organic and everything else) => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_ketdzJtY8&list=PL0o_zxa4K1BXP7TUO7656wg0uF1xYnwgm (1st introductory lesson from organic chemistry playlist)
Organic compounds
Organic compounds are very important to study. Due to carbon's ability to catenate (form chains with other carbon atoms), millions of organic compounds are known. Although organic compounds make up only a small percentage of Earth's crust, they are of central importance because all known life is based on organic compounds. Living things as plants incorporate inorganic carbon compounds into organic compounds (simple sugars) through a network of processes using CO2, H2O and sunlight. Most synthetically-produced organic compounds are ultimately derived from petrochemicals consisting mainly of Hydrocarbons, which are themselves formed from the high pressure and temperature degradation of organic matter underground over geological timescales. However in modern times, organic compounds are no longer defined as compounds originating in living things, as they were historically.
Dot diagram: Easy way to represent organic compounds. Every electron bond is represented as a line with 2 dots representing the 2 electrons. 2 covalent bonds (i.e 4 shared electrons) i shown with 2 parallel lines, while triple covalent bond (i.e 6 shared electrons) is shown with 3 parallel lines. Carbon has 4 valence electrons, so it forms 4 covalent bonds with other atoms. We always need 8 valence electrons (octet rule) to complete the shell for all atoms except Hydrogen/Helium which needs only 2 electrons in outermost shell.
Hybridized orbitals for Carbon: C has 6 electrons as 1s2 2s2 2p2. But the 2s2 and 2p2 orbitals become 4 hybridized orbitals as 2sp3 hybrid orbitals. They all form a big lobe and small lobe kind of shape. See "periodic Table" section.
Carbon bonds => Carbon forms covalent bonds with other atoms. It forms both Polar and Non-polar bonds. Since EN (electronegativity) of C is 2.5, it forms non polar bonds with H (EN=2.2). However with N (EN=3), O (EN=3.5), F (EN=4), Cl (EN=3) which are more EN than C, it forms polar covalent bonds. This determines a lot of properties in hydrocarbons. For EN details, see in "Atomic bonds" section.