Reaction Summary
Home Table of Contents Preliminary Information Carboxylic Acids Carboxylate Salts Esters Ethers Infrared Spectra Reaction Summary Wrap-Up

 

Reaction Summary

Before concluding, I would like to direct your attention to the summaries of the various reactions that we have talked about in this lesson and the previous one.

Example 23-a in your workbook (also shown here) deals with the reactions relating ethers, esters, carboxylic acids and salts as well as alcohols and aldehydes from the previous lesson. In this diagram "-H2O" means dehydration and "+H2O" means hydrolysis. You should be able to figure out the other abbreviations. If not, ask.

Summary of reactions relating oxyorganic compounds. [64rxn18.JPG]

 

Example 23-b in your workbook (also shown here)  shows that the same relationships exist between the special cases of fats, fatty acids, soaps and glycerol.

Summary of reactions relating fats, fatty acids and soaps. [64rxn20.JPG]

 

Example 24 in your workbook (not shown here) tries to summarize the synthesis of the various types of compounds that we have studied in this lesson and the previous one. You should familiarize yourself with these reactions because you will be expected to tell how any one of these types of compounds can be synthesized by starting with one of the others.

Alcohols are in or near the center of these diagrams because they are fairly central in terms of the kinds of chemicals that can be made from them. For example, alcohols can be dehydrated to form alkenes. And alkenes can be converted to alcohols by the addition of H2O.

Alcohols can be oxidized. They can be oxidized by the removal of two hydrogens. If you use a secondary alcohol, the compound that you form is a ketone. If the alcohol that is being oxidized is a primary alcohol, then an aldehyde will be formed and that aldehyde in turn could be oxidized to form an acid.

Alcohols can be involved in intermolecular dehydration reactions. If you have an intermolecular dehydration of alcohol molecules, you will end up with an ether. If you have an intermolecular dehydration reaction involving an alcohol and an acid, you end up with an ester.

These reactions can also be reversed, although the arrows in the diagram do not go in both directions. If you take an ester and hydrolyze it, you end up with alcohol and acid. If you take an ether and hydrolyze it, you end up with two alcohols. If you take an acid and reduce it, you can end up with an aldehyde, and that in turn, can be reduced to give a primary alcohol. A ketone can be reduced by the addition of two hydrogens to form a secondary alcohol. These reactions and the equations that represent them are shown in the summary sheet in Example 24-c in your workbook.

I recommend that the way you use these reaction summaries is to make your own similar diagrams rather than use these directly. That way you can summarize the reactions of and relationships between the different types of compounds in the way that makes the most sense to you. But study these diagram (and look through Examples 23 and 24) to make sure you know about each reaction shown there.

 

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