Question

How do organic chemistry functional groups relate to real life things? For example, I can think up that butter is an alkane, oil is an alkene, beer and wine are alcohols, but what are some common things that are ethers, esters, amines, amides, carboxylic acids, ketones, aldehydes, etc...?

Answer 1

Even more examples of alkanes or alkenes, alkynes, whatever are appreciated. I think I heard alkynes have disinfectant properties.

Then I can rationalize them to try to understand the functional groups better rather than just memorizing what they are in very vague, meaningless terms to me. Like how alkanes are butter since they can pack together at room temperature while alkenes are bent and can't as well. I'd guess that the disinfectant property of alkynes has to do with the higher acidity while still being a relatively nonpolar molecule allows germs to absorb and suffer from a death by acid?

Answer 2

Well, first of all, butter is not an alkane. It's a gel with the matrix largely made of entangled denatured proteins, and the liquid component blobs of fat -- and the fat is triglycerides, a triple ester with a polyol on one side of the ester O and a fatty acid on the other. The fatty acid does have a long alkane tail, though.

Pure alkanes are things like natural gas (methane with some ethane), the propane and butane in lighters, the heptane and octane in gasoline, kerosene, wax, oil, tar, coal (although all hydrocarbon fuels contain a substantial minority component of alkenes and even some alkynes).

One of the difficulties you'll have is that the size of the molecule, and whether it has any other functional groups, matters a lot. Small alkanes and alkenes tend to be smelly gasolinish solventish liquids and gases, but big ones are waxy. If you stick an acid group on the end, you get soap molecules. If you put a lot of OH groups on it, too, you get a carbohydrate.

On the whole, I would advise you to attempt to mentally separate the physical properties of molecules from their chemical properties. The two are only modestly related, and for large molecules weakly related.

Answer 3

I wasn't quite looking to make the assumption that it works like that. I know that fats are triacylglycerols but they do have those long alkane tails that give them a lot of their "character".

I'm really just looking to say in my own mind, aha! Polytetrafluoroethane is mostly teflon, that sort of thing.What's a common ingredient in paint for instance? I just want some kind of relevance to what I'm learning otherwise it's just following electrons and kind of dull and esoteric. Just any kind of general properties or things valid to my life for my own edification is all I'm seeking here, since I know nothing is 100% pure and will surely have other functional groups involved, but that's fine...

I guess I'm just bored of only really thinking, "Well medium rare carboxylic acids, amines and a side chain along with some mashed carbohydrates are for dinner." I'd like some more interesting examples lol.