Environmental Organic Chemistry for Engineers

Chapter 5

Properties of Organic Compounds

Abstract

Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds and all organic compounds contain carbon however, not all compounds that contain carbon are organic compounds (Bailey and Bailey, 2000; Atkins and Carey, 2002; Brown and Foote, 2002). There are some compounds of carbon that are not classified as organic such as carbonate minerals (e.g., sodium carbonate, Na₂CO₃, and calcium carbonate, CaCO₃) and cyanide compounds (such as potassium cyanide, KCN, or any of the metallic cyanide derivative) which are designated as inorganic compounds. Therefore, a more useful and less confusing description of organic chemistry might be that chemistry of compounds of carbon that usually contain hydrogen as ...