How do we name hydrocarbons?

Answer 1

At random, or at least it seems...but there are rules.

In any hydrocarbon, all the carbon atoms are connected together into some sort of formation and all the open bonding sites are populated by...in a classical hydrocarbon they're populated exclusively with hydrogen. It is possible to build hydrocarbon-like compounds that contain other elements, but those are "organic compounds." An easy example is fructose: if you take a hexane (C6H12) molecule and add six oxygen atoms at specific locations, you wind up with a monosaccharide that sells at the rate of 240,000 tons per year.

There are six basic species of hydrocarbons: alkanes, cycloalkanes, alkenes, dienes, aromatics and alkynes.

An ALKANE, or saturated hydrocarbon, is a long-chain molecule that has only single bonds between the carbon atoms, if there are enough carbon atoms in the compound to have bonds between them. (Methane, which has but one carbon atom, is an alkane.) All alkanes end in the suffix "ane."

CYCLOALKANES are alkanes in which the carbons form a ring structure. They have the same name as the alkane with the same carbon count, with the prefix "cyclo."

ALKENES, or unsaturated hydrocarbons, contain at least one carbon-carbon double bond. They all end in "ene."

DIENES are alkenes with two carbon-carbon double bonds, and their suffix is "diene."

AROMATICS are ring-form alkenes with alternating carbon-carbon single and double bonds. Because they are alkenes at heart, they end in "ene." There is an entire field of chemistry specializing in aromatics.

ALKYNES are also called "acetylenes." These have a carbon-carbon triple bond, and their suffix is "yne." (The IUPAC name for acetylene gas is ethyne.)

Answer 2

go back to high school! way too much to explain. or be more specific...

Answer 3

The compounds are called unsaturated.