Importance of Functional Groups in Organic Chemistry
January 3rd 2012 Posted at Real Estate
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While organic chemistry is considered as the branch of chemistry in which the compounds of carbon are studied, the name organic goes back to a much earlier time in history when chemists thought that chemical compounds in living organisms were fundamentally different from those that occur in nonliving things. Their belief was that the chemicals that could be extracted from or that were produced by living organisms had a special “vitalism” or “breath of life” given to them by some supernatural being. As such, they presented fundamentally different kinds of problems than did the chemicals found in rocks, minerals, water, air, and other nonliving entities. The chemical compounds associated with living organisms were given the name organic to emphasize their connection with life. In 1828, German chemist Friedrich Wöhler, who found a very simple way to convert chemical compounds from living organisms into comparable compounds from nonliving entiti we buy any house es, proved that this theory of vitalism was untrue. Consequently, the definition of organic chemistry changed as a result of Wöhler’s research. The new definition was based on the observation that every compound discovered in living organisms had one property in common; they all contained the element carbon. As a result, the modern definition of organic chemistry, as the study of compounds of carbon, was adopted.One important point that Wöhler’s research showed was that the principles and techniques of chemistry apply equally well to compounds found in living organisms and nonliving things. Nonetheless, some important differences between organic and inorganic (not organic) compounds exist. These include the following:1. The number of organic compounds vastly exceeds the number of inorganic compounds. The ratio of carbon-based compounds to non-carbon-based compounds is at least ten to one, with close to 10 million organic compounds known today.