Ch 11Aldehydes, Ketones and Carboxylic Acids — Class 12 Chemistry, concept-first.

Aldehydes and ketones are both carbonyl compounds -- organic molecules built around a group -- but they differ in exactly what else is attached to that carbon.

The carbonyl carbon in both aldehydes and ketones is hybridised: it forms three bonds (to oxygen and to the other two attached groups) that lie in a single plane at roughly to one another, and it carr…

Aldehydes and ketones can each be reached by several independent routes, chosen according to what starting material is conveniently available.

The physical properties of aldehydes and ketones sit, in a very literal sense, between those of non-polar alkanes and hydrogen-bonded alcohols of similar molar mass, and understanding why explains bot…

Every reaction discussed in the rest of this chapter's aldehyde/ketone sections -- addition of , of bisulphite, of alcohols, of Grignard reagents, of amines -- follows the same general mechanistic pat…

A range of common nucleophiles all add to the carbonyl group by the general mechanism of §8.5, but differ in what final product results once the tetrahedral intermediate is formed.

Although every carbonyl compound reacts by the same general mechanism (§8.5), aldehydes and ketones do not react at the same rate: aldehydes are consistently and substantially more reactive towards nu…

A hydrogen atom on the carbon immediately adjacent to a carbonyl group -- the -carbon -- behaves quite differently from an ordinary bond elsewhere in the molecule: it is markedly acidic (with a around…

The haloform reaction is a specific, exhaustive halogenation of the -carbon that occurs only for a particular structural class of carbonyl compound: a methyl ketone, , or acetaldehyde, , itself (any c…

Ethanol is not itself a methyl ketone, yet it gives a positive iodoform test -- and understanding why requires recognising that the test conditions ( in ) actually generate sodium hypoiodite, , in sit…

Benzaldehyde, , has no -hydrogen at all -- its carbonyl carbon is attached directly to the aromatic ring on one side and to hydrogen on the other, and neither of these is a carbon bearing hydrogens th…

Aldehydes are readily oxidised even by comparatively mild oxidising agents, all the way to carboxylic acids, because the hydrogen sitting directly on the carbonyl carbon of an aldehyde can be abstract…

A carbonyl group can be reduced to two different end points depending on the reagent chosen: partial reduction gives an alcohol (the becomes ), while complete reduction removes the oxygen entirely and…

Formaldehyde (, methanal), the simplest possible aldehyde, is manufactured on an enormous industrial scale and used chiefly for two purposes.

A carboxylic acid, , combines a carbonyl group and a hydroxyl group on the same carbon -- and it is precisely this combination, not either group in isolation, that gives carboxylic acids their charact…

Not all carboxylic acids are equally acidic; the identity and position of substituents on the carbon chain can shift the substantially, and the direction of that shift follows directly from how the su…

Carboxylic acids can be reached from several different starting points, and the choice of method in practice usually depends on which starting material is conveniently on hand.

A carboxylic acid's group is unusual among common functional groups in being able to act as both a hydrogen-bond donor (through its acidic hydrogen) and a hydrogen-bond acceptor (through the lone pair…

Acetic acid is, by a wide margin, the most familiar and most widely used carboxylic acid, valued in two quite different contexts.

Sample papers and previous-year board questions for this subject.