CHEM 213 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Chch-Dt, Cyclopentane, Organic Compound
Document Summary
Organic chemistry as the study of carbon-based compounds (organic compounds) Enormous impact of organic chemistry in the modern world, including biomedicine (nucleic acids, proteins, enzymes, lipids, carbohydrates, drugs ), electronics, materials, etc. of course it"s difficult! The problem with organic chemistry: early chemist relied on brute (= composition) formulas to identify compounds. This generally worked with simple inorganic substances [salt (nacl), limestone (caco3), etc. Nacl was always salt, or one that that analyzed as caco3 was always limestone, no matter its origin or how it was produced, many distinct organic (=carbon-based) compounds were found to correspond to a given composition. Structural theory of organic chemistry: chemical individuality is determined by the precise atomic arrangement within (= the structure of) a molecule. This principle explained why there is no correlation between the atomic composition (= the formula) of an organic compound and its individuality (contrary to what happens with many inorganic compounds).
