Friday 26 August 2016

Alcohols

INTRODUCTION

The structure of alcohols tells us a lot about their physical properties and chemical reactions. Last year, the first lesson was about the different isomers of C4H9OH, with the students starting by trying to make (and name) all of the ones that contain the alcohol functional group. Can you name these?








PREPARATION

There are a few ways to make alcohols:
  • fermentation of sugars
  • synthesis gas
  • hydration of alkenes
We looked at the hydration of 1-butene using dilute sulfuric acid:



REACTIONS

In this topic, we will do some experiments with primary, secondary and tertiary alcohols. Here are some videos explaining some of the expected observations and how to use them to identify/classify alcohols.







Tuesday 23 August 2016

Wednesday 17 August 2016

Hydrocarbons - Alkenes (1)

This lesson is the first one about Alkenes:

  • isomerism (including geometric isomers)
  • naming (including cis and trans, when applicable)

2013 Video

2014 Video


2015 Video



Tuesday 16 August 2016

Reactions of Alkanes

Today we looked at some of the physical and chemical properties of alkanes. Honestly, this is not very exciting, but it is useful to know these properties and reactions for the latter part of this unit.

Monday 15 August 2016

Hydrocarbons - Alkanes

Today we looked at the alkanes:
  • "functional group" - not really relevant for this homologous group
  • general structure
  • naming
  • isomerism

The videos being posted in this blog will be from previous years while Mrs Goodman teaches us.