Guiding Questions
The Importance of Carbon
- Explain how carbon’s electron configuration accounts for its ability to form large, complex, and diverse organic molecules.
- Describe how carbon skeletons may vary, and explain how this variation contributes to the diversity and complexity of organic molecules.
- Describe the basic structure of a hydrocarbon and explain why these molecules are hydrophobic.
- Distinguish among the three types of isomers: structural, geometric, and enantiomer.
Functional Groups
- Name the major functional groups found in organic molecules. Describe the basic structure of each functional group and outline the chemical properties of the organic molecules in which they occur.
