Organic chemistry is the study of molecules that have carbon atoms.
With four valence electrons,
carbon often catenates, which means it bonds to itself. So it forms lots of different compounds.
Modern organic chemistry, which begins right around the mid-1800s.
willow, ephedra, and poppies were known by ancient civilizations to have medicinal benefits.
These plants contain medicinal organic molecules like salicylic acid, ephedrine, and morphine.
Organic means derived from living things,and the term organic chemistry was coined by the Swedish
chemist Jacob Berzelius, who discovered several elements and came up with the modern chemical
symbols.
Urea is the main nitrogen-containing part of urine that comes from our body's metabolic breakdown
of proteins. But it's also a great fabric dye mordant, which is a chemical that makes the dye last
longer and often enhances the color. Indigo dye. The same dye that makes our jeans blue.
German Chemist, Friedrich Wohler.
He was a rock collector and is credited with being the first person to isolate the elements yttrium,
beryllium, and titanium -- and the first person to discover organic matter on meteorites. But he's most
well known for his discovery that an inorganic salt, ammonium cyanate, could be used to make urea
without a living organism. Wohler's discovery in 1828 is considered the starting point of the modern
organic chemical industry.
today, organic chemistry is defined as the study of the structure, properties, composition, reactions,
and preparation of carbon-containing compounds.
Lewis structures illustrate what atoms are connected and they show all of the bonds and lone pairs
of electrons in a molecule.
Propane is a common fuel for home heating and barbeque grills. And it's a simple organic
compound. Propane's molecular formula is C3H8, so it has 3 carbon atoms and 8 hydrogen atoms.
Molecular formula tells us the atoms web have and how many of each atom there are, but it doesn't
tell us what's bonded to what. For that, we'll need a Lewis structure.
Remember that each bond represents 2 electrons, so 4 bonds per carbon is 8 electrons.
In skeletal formulas, carbons are the bends or the ends of the lines.
Hydrogens aren't shown because carbon atoms in most organic compounds have 4 bonds, so the
number of hydrogens needed to give each carbon 4 bonds is implied.
Heteroatoms are those atoms other than carbon or hydrogen.
Aspartame, which I just mentioned, is in the little blue sugar packets that we can add to our coffee.
Retinal, a molecule in our eyes that's responsible for turning visible light into nerve signals.
Most video screens and computer equipment have lots of organic polymers. One important
breakthrough in polymer chemistry in the 1970s was how to make plastics conduct electricity.
Special kinds of polymers are responsible for lightweight laptops, tablets, and phones we carry
around, because plastics are a lot lighter than metals. Also, light-emitting polymers are responsible
for full color displays. These light-emitting polymers behave almost like metals but change colors
with different amounts of electricity.
Beets are high in betanin, a dye that gives them a lovely purple color. Some people don't metabolize
betanin so it turns their urine and feces purple.
Organic compounds give color to a lot of the foods and other things we see every single day,
whether they're fixed with urea or not.
