Organic Compounds

"Organic chemistry ... is enough to drive one mad. It gives me the impression of a primeval tropical forest, full of the most remarkable things, a monstrous and boundless thicket, with no way of escape, into which one may well dread to enter"

-attributed to Friedrich Wohler, the chemist who first synthesized an organic compound from inorganic materials.(Silberberg*, p.586).

In chemistry, the study of carbon compounds is known as organic chemistry. Organic chemistry was once thought to be confined to the study of substances produced as part of the natural processes of living organisms, but as Friedrich Wohler discovered in the early 1800's, organic compounds can be synthesized in the laboratory from minerals and other non-organic materials. Indeed, modern chemistry and materials sciences have focused on the remarkable properties of the carbon atom to develop specialized materials, pesticides, and a host of other products. Organic compounds contain carbon, nearly always bonded to another carbon and/or hydrogen. Often, other elements like, sulfur, nitrogen and oxygen, are bonded to the carbons as well. There are a few carbon compounds that are not considered to be organic molecules. These include carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, cyanates, cyanides and other carbon-containing ionic compounds.

The diversity and amazing structural complexity seen in organic compounds is due to the unique features of the carbon atom:

The carbon atom is small
The carbon atom has intermediate electronegativity, (the ability to abstract electrons from other atoms).
The carbon atom can make as many as 4 bonds with other atoms. These bonds can extend out in as many as 4 different directions.
Carbon-carbon bonds can occur in long chains, or they can occur as closed structures or rings.
The carbon atom can form multiple bonds. For example, it forms double bonds with other carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen atoms.

These properties of carbon are responsible for an astounding variety of organic compounds. The many ways in which carbon can bond to itself and a small number of other compounds permits this diversity.

Martin Silberberg* provides an apt anatomical analogy between the organic molecule and a body. The carbon-carbon bonds form the skeleton, with the longest continual chain as the backbone. Branches are analogous to the limbs. Covering the skeleton is a skin of hydrogen atoms. Functional groups protrude at specific locations, like chemical fingers, ready to grab an incoming reactant.

Organic compounds are depicted using a variety of formats including Lewis structures, space filling models, and structural formulas. It is not uncommon to show the hydrogens as lines or to leave them out all together in a structural formula of a an organic molecule. They are understood to be present to complete the 4-bonds required by the carbon atoms. Carbon compounds can form long complicated chains so it is useful to resort to a sort of visual shorthand to show the common and repeating features of the chain.

Even though there are millions of organic compounds, there is a relatively simple classification scheme for these compounds and a system for naming even the most complicated organic compounds. This unit will focus on helping you to identify organic compound classifications and naming only some of the most common of these compounds.

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