Panorama of Organic Chemistry

By Olatunde S Moses

This book is aimed to serve as a study pack to all students, especially those preparing for Chemistry examinations at high school level and university entrance examinations in the organic aspect of Chemistry. Students in their early stage of tertiary education will also find this book as a potent instrument for success in Organic Chemistry.

Panorama of Organic Chemistry for Secondary School and Undergraduate Students serves as a veritable platform to encourage students to appreciate and study Chemistry related courses such as Pharmacy, Biochemistry, Medicine, Forensic Chemistry and so on.

The book explicitly explains concepts of Organic Chemistry in simple manners. Many examples are given in this book to illustrate better, the explanations given on each topic. Apart from the examples, problems are also provided to test the adequacy of the readers.

The book is divided into eleven chapters. The first six chapters extensively introduce the idea of organic concepts such as Hydrocarbons, Formulae in Organic Chemistry, Isomerism, Aromatic Compounds and Petroleum while chapters seven to eleven focus on Oxygen Containing Compounds like Alcohol, Carbonyl Compounds, and Giant molecules such as Carbohydrates, Amino Acids and Protein

• Language: English
• Publisher: Olatunde S Moses
• Release date: Mar 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781370545384

Olatunde S Moses

About Olatunde S. MosesOlatunde S. Moses is a Nigerian born Canadian and a seasoned chemistry professional who has a huge wealth of experience both as chemistry teacher and quality assurance expert in food processing and nutraceutical industries.Osmoses as he is fondly called by his students is a graduate of Applied Chemistry from Osun State Polytechnic and holds Postgraduate Diploma in Education from Uthman Danfodiyo University all in Nigeria.Olatunde S. Moses is a member of Chemical Society of Nigeria, Professional Technology Saskatchewan and Institute of Chartered Chemist of Nigeria

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

WHY STUDY ORGANIC CHEMISTRY?

This is a question that has been asked by many chemistry students over the years. The best answer is that you need it to get into some specialized programmes like medical or dental schools. An appreciable knowledge of organic chemistry is important to understand the chemistry of life. The above question raises another question like What is Organic Chemistry?

People have been using materials obtained from nature before civilization. Not until 19th century when scientists began the systematic identification, characterization and classification of compounds obtained from living organisms. These compounds are called organic compounds; hence, the study of organic compounds is called Organic Chemistry. Today, most of these organic compounds can be made from inorganic materials in the laboratory. Friedrich Wohler was the first chemist to synthesize urea (CO(NH2)2 from an in organic compound, ammonium cyanate (NH4CNO). This is what however annulled the general belief that organic compounds cannot be prepared in a chemistry laboratory. That is why today we define organic chemistry as the chemistry of carbon containing compounds.

Organic Chemistry is used in the chemical industries to prepare many important compounds that were originally available only from plants and animals. For example, the pain relief aspirin was originally obtained from the bark of a willow tree, the major reason it was available only in small quantities. Now, hundreds of tones of aspirin are produced in the industry per year. Organic chemistry is also used to prepare organic compounds not found in nature (i.e in plants and animals) such as insecticides, plastics, paints, and blood substitute.

The large and complicated molecules of DNA that contain our genetic information, the proteins that make up the muscles and the skin of our bodies, the enzymes that catalyze the chemical reactions in our bodies and the carbohydrates that provide us energy are some of the organic compounds that carry out important functions in living organisms. These few illustrations have given answers to the above question on why it is important to study and learn the principles of organic chemistry.

It is however important for us to know at this juncture that, the common feature of all organic compounds or chemicals is that they all contain the element carbon. We do not usually count small molecules like CO2 or CO as organic compounds, but this is just a matter of convenience, not a strict rule. The question now is, what is so special about carbon that makes chemists give it an integral part, in chemistry called Organic Chemistry? The answer is not far fetched from us, it is simply because carbon is unique. Even though we know that organic compounds can contain other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, the halogens, phosphorus, sulphur and some metals, yet, the uniqueness of carbon cannot be over-emphasized.

Uniqueness of Carbon

Below are some of the properties that make carbon a unique element in organic chemistry.

1)Catenation: This is the exceptional ability of carbon atoms to combine with one another to form straight chains, branched chains or ring compounds having many carbon atoms. This property has led carbon atoms to form a great number of compounds ranging from simple compounds like methane (a compound with 1 carbon atom) to complex nucleic acids (like DNA) and lately a giant molecule like buckminister fullerene (a compound with 60 carbon atoms) was discovered.

2)The ease with which carbon can combine with other element like hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur and the halogens.

3)Carbons also have the ability to form single (–), double (=) and triple (≡) bonds with one another and with atoms of other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen.

General Properties of All Organic Compounds

1)All organic compounds are covalent in nature.

2)All hydrocarbons are non-polar because they are made of molecules. They are non-electrolytes because they do not contain ions.

3)They are mostly insoluble in water and other polar solvent because they are non-polar. For example kerosene, paraffin or/and petrol do not dissolve in water. However if an organic compound contains a polar group, hydrogen bond can be formed between the polar group of the organic compound and the water molecule, thereby making the organic compound dissolves in water. For instance, an alkanol contains an hydroxyl group -OH which makes it polar, so it is soluble in water. The lower members of the alkanol or alcohol like methanol (CH3OH), ethanol (C2H5OH) and propanol (C3H7OH) are more soluble than longer chain alcohols like butanol (C4H9OH), pentanol (C5H11OH) octanol (C8H17OH) e.t.c.

But why is glucose (which is also an organic compound) soluble in water despite the fact that it has 6 carbons like hexanol (which is insoluble in water)? It is because; glucose has more OH groups than the hexanol.

We can therefore conclude that the more the functional group the higher the solubility i.e solubility is directly proportional to the number of functional

Reviews for Panorama of Organic Chemistry

[salamzubayr544 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

the elaborate explanations and the consice simplicity of the text is what made it soo great