What is the molecular structure of vegetable oil? What make vegetable oil non-polar?

Question

anonymous · Answer

http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/pdf/Fats&Oils.pdf let me know if you have any questions after reading that.

anonymous · Answer

What does it mean that Ra Rb Rc are fatty acids can they be broken down further?
And what part of this structure makes it so its non-polar

anonymous · Answer

the R's look like they represnt function groups which can be attached to other chemical function groups or attach to another fatty acid. It's non polar because it's lacking lone pairs or highly dipole atoms. Think of it kind of like a magnet having a north and south pole, when you have a molecule with a lone pair it's going to attempt to attract another molecule with similary properties. So also another physical property you where you can see this happen in real life is when you put oil in water. Water is polar and oil isn't so they seperate and seek to be near the similary molecules.

anonymous · Answer

Yes exactly! but could you explain one more time how H2O being polar and vegtable oil being non-polar relate to the molecular structure?

Sorry I really don't understand what make things polar and non-polar

anonymous · Answer

Ok so water has a higher dipole moment where the oxegen has a greater capability to pull the electrons of the hydrogen atoms closer to it. This results in one side of the molecule being negitive and one side being positive. On your oil molecule we were looking at this embalance of charge doesn't occur for a few reasons which the first is Carbon doesn't have the ability to pull as hard on on the hydrogens atom electorns. The other reason this doesn't happen with the oil is because there is not any loan pairs of electrons which also add to the polarity of a molecule.

anonymous · Answer

|dw:1335405224444:dw| now if we look at and compair the lewis structur from the water molecule and the oil molecule we notice the loan pairs of electrons (Not my best drawling but i'm using a touch pad) but hopefully you will be able to make it out and see the positive and negitively charged ends of the molecule.