Everything you need to know about Alkanes

Saturday, March 26, 2016 4:56 PM

Alkanes are Hydrocarbons: This means they consist of only carbon and hydrogen atoms. Below are the following alkanes you need to know.

Properties of Alkanes Include:

1. Lower members are gases(up to butane), upper members are liquids
and wax like solids.
2. They are non-polar meaning they are not soluble in water.
3. Alkanes are saturated compounds, meaning they only consist of single
bonds.
4. Alkanes burn in oxygen to produce CO2 and H20

Isomers: These are compounds which have the same molecular formula
but different structural formulas.

Cycloalkanes: Are alkanes which form a ring structure.

Aromatic compounds: Is one bases on a benzene ring.

When naming organic compounds such as alkanes you must know the following rules.

1) The chain with the longest amount of carbons attached determines the name of the compound whether it be a Butane or Pentane etc.
For example….
In this molecule you can see the longest carbon chain is 7. Therefore
this is a Heptane

• It is also important to understand what functional groups are. If an element is attached such as in the example above you remove the end
name and attach an O e.g Bromine here becomes Bromo and Chlorine becomes Chloro.
• If an organic compound is attached it is named according to what its relative carbon number would be e.g if a CH2 was to be attached ,
that substituent would be named methyl. If a C2H5 were attached it would be named a ethyl etc. These are known as substituent groups.

2) When functional groups are part of a parent chain they take importance over the substitute groups. This means you want to name the
functional group with the lowest number. After you do this you want to name it in alphabetical order. So here Bromine comes before Chlorine
therefore this would be named

3) If you have both substitute and functional groups the same rules apply. You want to have the functional group with the lowest number possible.
After this take into account the substitute.
As you can see this is a heptane again but with a methyl group attached. The functional group can be 2 named either side however the lowest
possible value for the substitute is 3 therefore naming right to left is preferred. Alphabetical order is then used when naming it out. This is the final
result below

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