Naming Alkanes - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems
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Rules for Naming Alkanes
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In this video, we're gonna take a look at naming alkanes. Now, in naming organic compounds, we use the Iupac method of nomenclature or naming system, Iupac stands for the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. This is just our systematic set of rules when it comes to naming different organic compounds. Now, starting with naming alkanes, it's first important to remember our Alcaine prefixes. We're gonna say alkane names are based on the number of carbons present in a molecule and end with a of cannes and with Ain, that's how it works. Now, we use the following prefixes to name the base of the Alcaine. So if we take a look here at our Alcaine prefixes, it goes from one carbon all the way up to 10. Now, of course, you can have a chain that has greater than 10. Um you could have 1112, 13. But for this level of chemistry, we work within our range of 1 to 10. For those of you who are gonna go later on into organic one and organic two, you go into larger chains where you're gonna go beyond 10, depending on your professors um inclinations. So here we're going to say if you have one carbon, then your prefix is meth. So a one carbon alkane will be called meth. Thee remember this is the prefix that end with a two carbons. A prefix would be F so a two carbon alkane is ethane, three would be prop propane four would be but butane five carbons. Now, here at this point, some of it makes sense because we know Pentagram five sides, we're gonna say Pentagon five sides. So five is pent pentane hexagon. Um six is hexane seven carbons is Hept heptane. Eight carbons is oct octane, nine carbons is non. So this is a little weird no name and then 10 carbons is deck decane. So some of these terms we know Decane, Decathlon, we know rhymes with it associates with the number of 10, right? So just remember these are our numerical prefixes or Alcaine prefixes. The endings of them would be ain because they represent alkanes, right? So before we start into naming, it's important to recall these Alcaine prefixes.
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Naming Alkanes Example
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Here, it says name the following al Cannes. All of them are al cannes because all of them are carbon single bonded to one another. Now remember since they're al cannes, their endings would be aim and we'd say that their prefix is based on the number of carbons. For this first one, it's only one carbon and we know that the prefix would be meth. So the name of this Alcaine is methane for the next one. How many carbons do we have? We have 1234 carbons. The prefix would be but so this is butane and then here we have it in its skeletal formula. So remember each line connects two carbons together. So there's a carbon here, here, here, here, here and here. How many carbons is that? 1234566 would mean that our prefix is hex. So the name of this Alcaine will be Hexane. So just remember they're all Alcaine. So their endings are ain. And then you just have to remember what is your Alcaine prefix based on the number of carbons present? Putting those together, gives us our Alcaine name