chadvelscience

Alcohols: What is Alcohol? Indigenous and aboriginal tribes have been found making alcohol beverages by fermentation, thausands of years back. Fruit juices, barley, rice water, and grains were fermented and used as alcohol beverages to enjoy their religious rituals and leisure time. As time passed alcohols begun to be used as medicine but somehere in the past this practice was stopped due intoxicating property of alcohol.  So basically alcohols is a class of chemicals majorly used in the form of beverages which when ingested, it reaches to the brain causing intoxication. Alcohols and Phenols: Definition of Alcohols: When -OH(hydroxyl) group is bound to  hydrocarbon chain of an alkane, the new formed  organic compound is called an alcohol.  If R represents an alkane , then "R-OH" is general formula of an alcohol. Definition of Phenols: When -OH(hydroxyl) group is bound to  benzene ring , the new compound formed is called Phenol. Molecules of alcohols and phenols are bent sh

Definition of Aromatic Compounds: "Compounds containing benzene ring have distinctive fragrances. Hence, benzene family compounds are called Aromatic compounds . Example: Toluene, Aniline and Phenol". Figure 1.1 Long form of IUPAC: "International union of pure and applied chemistry". Aromatic compounds having benzene in their structural formula have been important in Chemistry. In the IUPAC naming of  aromatic compounds  common names of derivatives of benzene, such as Toluene, Aniline and Phenol, are used to name the whole compound. Figure  below shows the structure of Toluene, Aniline and Phenol: Let's see how these derivatives of benzene are named: No.1)   Figure 1.2 W hen benzene ring has only one substituent, there is no need of numbering. And as per IUPAC, first comes the name of substituent, followed by the common name  benzene. Example: Toluene, Aniline, and Phenol. No.2)   Figure 1.3 When benzene ring has more than one substituent, then, start numbering

It is always refreshing to smell "aroma" of a beautiful flower or a perfume. In the early 19th century chemists came across compounds having distinctive fragrances. Then in 1825, Michael Faraday isolated a  hydrocarbon compound called " benzene ", with molecular formula C 6 H 6 . Such, hydrocarbon compounds having a benzene, found to have a distinctive fragrances hence, this benzene family compounds with distinctive aroma are called " Aromatic compunds ". Aromatic compounds. In benzene(C 6 H 6 ), each carbon atom uses three valence electrons to bond to one hydrogen and to two adjacent carbon atoms.  Carbon actually has four valence electrons to share with any atom it is supossed to bond but here we saw in benzene,  carbon atom just used three of its four valence electrons. So, the question is where this last electron got used; scientists first thought this last electron is used to form a double bond with an adjacent carbon atom. This dilemma among exper

Since many centuries we human beings, have been using polymers. Chemists and scientists have been curious and eventually this chemistry experts did hard work and thus, today we know everything about Organic compounds . Apart from alkanes , alkenes and alkynes , there is a very interesting family of compounds that we need to understand about, called Polymers. What is polymer: The Swedish chemist Jon Jacob Berzelius in 1833, first used the word polymer where "poly" in latin means "many" and "mer" means "units". Thus, the polymer is a macromolecules (large molecule) formed of many repeating units of monomers.  Natural Polymer: Wool, amber, natural rubber, cellulose and many such examples found in nature are examples of natural polymers.  Synthetic Polymer: Due to centuries of advancements in the field of chemistry, we have been artificially synthesizing polymers such as polythene, polyvinyl chloride, polypropene and many others. Plastic wraps, cups,

Approximately 4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago a geological process began acting on the remains of plants and animals and as a result of such a long process occurring under layers of earth's crust, today we have fossil fuels. Coal, petroleum, natural gas, and crude oil are the fossil fuels which we use in our daily life in one or the other form and knowingly or unknowingly we have become slaves of this fossil fuels.  Organic compounds  such as alkanes , akenes, alkynes and polymers  also known as hydrocarbons, which are mainly derived from fossil fuels. This, hydrocarbons are the organic compounds majorly formed of hydrogen and carbon atoms. To know about  IUPAC nomclature of alkanes you can check out my earlier blogs. In this blog we will study alkenes and alkynes. Let's start: Alkenes and alkynes are the hydrocarbon compounds with at least one double and triple bond respectively.  Figure1.1 For example: we will see first member of alkene family, called Ethene and also know