Organic Chemistry: Some Basic Principles and Techniques

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Organic chemistry is the branch of chemistry dealing with the study of hydrocarbons and the compounds which could be thought of as derivatives of hydrocarbons. Organic compounds are mainly covalent, w…

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Carbon forms more than five million compounds because of three main reasons: catenation, ability to form multiple bonds, and isomerism. Strong C-C bonds and tetravalency make long chains and rings sta…

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Catenation is the property of atoms of an element to link with one another by stable covalent bonds to form straight chains, branched chains, or rings. Carbon shows this property to the maximum extent…

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Ground state carbon has configuration 1s2 2s2 2px1 2py1, which gives only two half-filled orbitals. In the excited state, one electron from 2s is promoted to 2pz, giving 1s2 2s1 2px1 2py1 2pz1. Now fo…

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van't Hoff and Le Bel predicted that the four valencies of carbon are directed towards the four corners of a regular tetrahedron at 109°28'. This explains the tetrahedral shape of methane and many sp3…

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Bond length order is sp3-sp3 (154 pm) > sp2-sp2 (134 pm) > sp-sp (120 pm). More s-character means shorter bond length because the bond is closer to the nucleus.

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A C=C bond contains one sigma bond and one pi bond. Breaking the pi bond requires absorption of about 251 kJ/mol, so free rotation is not possible under normal conditions.

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Geometrical isomerism is shown by compounds containing carbon-carbon double bonds. Compounds of the type aaC=Cab cannot show it, because the two possible arrangements are identical.