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Alkanes

Alkanes:

I have discussed definition of Organic compounds in my earlier blogs but still we will go through the definition once again. So, The organic compounds are the compounds containing carbon and hydrogen atoms. These organic compounds may also contain oxygen, sulphur, nitrogen, phosphorous, and halogens.

Alkanes are the organic compounds formed of carbon and hydrogen, bonded only by single bonds. Carbon chain in alkanes contains only single bond and this is a unique characteristic which differentiates alkanes from other types of organic compounds. Let's see who are the members of alkane family in the figure as follows:

Alkanes with names, molecular formula and structural formula.

You can see in the figure above all the condensed structural formulas of alkanes from Methane to Decane shows all carbons attached by single bond in a straight chain. But there are the type of alkanes with a structure having a branch or group(functional group) attached to such a single chain structure.

Hence, keeping this in mind, structure of alkanes can be of two types:

No.1- Alkanes with a single straight carbon chain structure where there is no branch or group or substituent attached to it. 

No.2- Alkanes with a branch or group or substituent, attached to a straight carbon chain structure. This type of alkanes are called "branched alkane".

Let' understand these two types of alkanes with an example of Butane. 

Isomers of Butane

The above 3 structures of Butane contains five carbon atoms. Of which, the first structure is a single straight chain of five carbon atoms, the second structure has a methyl group attached to the second carbon atom(from right) of four-carbon straight chain and the third structure has two methyl groups attached above and below to the second carbon atom of three-carbon straight chain.

These three different structures of butane are called isomers of butane.

" Alkanes with same molecular formula or empirical formula, but different structural formula are called isomers".

Along with the substituents or akyl branch, functional groups are also found attached to the alkanes, which gives a set of unique chemical properties to the alkane they attached to. The same functional group undergoes same chemical reactions regardless of the alkane or any other organic compound they are attached to.

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