Pre-lecture Assignment 2
Skeletal Structures
You're likely familiar with how to represent simple molecules using Lewis structures. (If not, check out that section of the Foundations Module!) For more complicated molecules, however, writing out Lewis structures can laborious and time consuming. Similarly, the cluttered formalism used for Lewis structures can be difficult to interpret with a quick glance. In this lesson, we will learn about an alternative formalism that is commonly used for representing the structures of carbon-containing molecules.
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Skeletal structures are a standardized formalism that is used as shorthand for representing the structures of molecules (see Figure 1). They can be drawn quickly, and they aren’t as crowded as Lewis structures. We’ll examine how to draw these structures from a Lewis structure in the video below.
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Functional Groups
In this course we will come across a variety of functional groups. A functional group is a group of atoms and/or bonds within a larger molecule that exhibits a particular chemical property and/or reactivity. Aside from the hydrocarbon functional groups (alkane, alkene, alkyne, aromatic), there are eight additional ones highlighted in the video below.
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