Organic Chemistry 5th Edition

Book Preface

The first two chapters of the text cover a variety of topics that you need to get started with your study of organic chemistry.

Chapter 1 reviews the topics from general chemistry that will be important to your study of organic chemistry. The chapter starts with a description of the structure of atoms and then proceeds to a description of the structure of molecules. Molecular orbital theory is introduced.

Acid–base chemistry, which is central to understanding many organic reactions, is reviewed. You will see how the structure of a molecule affects its acidity and how the acidity of a solution affects molecular structure. To discuss organic compounds, you must be able to name them and visualize their structures when you read or hear their names. In Chapter 2, you will learn how to name five different classes of organic compounds. This will give you a good understanding of the basic rules followed in naming compounds. Because the compounds examined in the chapter are either the reactants or the products of many of the reactions presented in the next 10 chapters, you will have the opportunity to review the nomenclature of these compounds as you proceed through those chapters. The structures and physical properties of these compounds will be compared and contrasted, which makes learning about them a little easier than if each compound were presented separately. Because organic chemistry is a study of compounds that contain carbon, the last part of Chapter 2 discusses the spatial arrangement of the atoms in both chains and rings of carbon atoms.