Organic Compounds: Cyclo, alkanes, alkenes, and alkynes

Organic Compound
(butene)

Organic Compounds: Cyclo, Alkenes, Alkanes, Alkynes

When naming basic organic compounds you need to know the prefixes for the number of carbons present in the longest chain.

In the above diagram on the left the names for each chain of carbons are written. These are the names of organic compounds that have one to ten carbons atoms in a single chain. If the ending of "ane" is changed to an "ene" (double bond) or "yne" (triple bond) it tells you that a carbon atom in the chain is sharing more than one electron with a carbon near it.

Butene Line diagram

In the above diagram is a Butene molecule (line form). To name this you look for the longest chain of carbons (which is four) giving you the base name of Butane. Then you realize that there is a double bond at the second carbon atom (remember to make the number you counted from as small as possible within the compound) so you put a 2 infront of the butane and replace the "ane" with a "ene" meaning that there's a double bond. The end result should be 2-Butene.

Cyclopentane

When naming a cyclo (a circular organic compound) you first need to find out if the cyclo portion has the longest chain of carbons within it or if that it is connected to another chain of electrons. If it is the main chain its easy as counting the carbons present in the chain and naming that if its an alkane, alkene or alkyne and putting cyclo infront of it. Like in the diagram above it can be seen that there are five carbons so the base name is pentane and since there are no double bond you can just say Cyclopentane. If the cyclo is just an addition the main carbon chain you just state the position of the clyclo with a number and then state how many are in the cyclo and name the rest of the compound normally.

methylbutane

Also when naming organic compounds there can be side chains of elements (in this case carbons). These are easily named by looking at how many are in the side chain and naming it accordingly; in the digram above there is one carbon in the side chain so you can write methane and since its a side chain instead of "ane" you write yl. These leaves you with 2-methylbutane.