Naming organic compounds

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NubianPrincess

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This stuff is so confusing! Any tricks or tips to naming alkanes and cycloalkanes? :confused:

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My only suggestion is to keep the common names separate from IUPAC names so you don't accidentally interchange them when constructing the name from it's constituents. Good luck!
 
Naming Alkanes and Cycloalkanes are hard??? give me a break.. thats the easiest thing about OChem...
 
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•••quote:•••Originally posted by FLY:
•Naming Alkanes and Cycloalkanes are hard??? give me a break.. thats the easiest thing about OChem...•••••Yep. I would have to agree with this guy.

If you are having problems with this...don't expect the rest of the semester to be fun

<img border="0" alt="[Pity]" title="" src="graemlins/pity.gif" />
 
This is definitely the easiest part. If you can't do this, you may not be able to do the rest because on many of my tests it would say: "so and so compound reacts with so and so" so you had to know how to draw it before you could even solve it.
 
Okay, lets make this easy.
First of all, find the longest chain of carbons. That will give you your root. Secondly, you need to see what groups are attached to that chain. Lets say we have a methyl group attached at the #2 carbon of a 5 carbon chain. Don't forget, the chain is numbered by having the attached groups occupy the lowest. If its on the 2nd carbon of a 5 carbon chain, it could be #2 or #4, we always go for the #2.
So, this would be named 2-methylpentane
IUPAC

Lets say we have 3 methyl groups, 2 on the #2 carbon and 1 on the #4 carbon. This compound would be called 2,2,4 trimethylpentane.

Of course, then we add in double and triple bonds. The ending of the main root name just changes. Say again we have a 5 carbon compound with a methyl group on #2, but a double bond between carbons 2 and 3.

We would call this
2-methyl,3-pentene

Mossjoh
 
I love Ochem! I actually thought it was a fun class. I am weird though. :)
 
Ok, listen things can seem a bit overwhelming at first...just try your best and work through them--talk to a friend or a t.a. may be able to help...WE'VE all BEEN THERE and thought well if we don't know this, we'll never do any good...anyway JUST GET THAT OUT OF YOUR MIND and relax---that's 80 pacent of the problem!
 
Actually, im not in ochem...this is my retake of chemII and this school gives an intro to Ochem.
But thanks for the encouragement :rolleyes:
I understand the concepts, but im wondering if there are some type of tricks for remembering all of the secondaries, isos and normals. I keep getting it confused. Is it just memorization of what looks how?
 
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