When you see the formula CH3COOH, how would you name it? How do you get to the name "vinegar?"!?!?

Question

I get it that it's acetic acid, and that is called vinegar. But I just want to know, if I only had the chemical formula, and no where else to look, how would I name that? For example, I have C6H12O6. Without the use of Google, how do I find out what to call this? Thanks!

Answer 1

organic chemisty is a college level course that focuses on two major areas. nomenclature and reactions of organic molecules. It's a 16 week course that requires intense memorization. it isn't something that can be thoroughly explaned in a yahoo answers forum...

but, that said....

typically you find the primary functional group of the molecule, then you determine the structure. the two go together to form the name....

in the case of acetic acid....

CH3 - CO -OH (where the CO is a carbon double bonded to the oxygen)

the functional group is a carboxylic acid... -CO-OH

-CO-OH is always a carboxylic acid fyi....

in general it is written as R-CO-OH or R-COOH

where the R can be anything.

if the R is an

H-, this molecule is called Formic acid
if CH3-, it's acetic acid
if CH3CH2-, it's proprionic acid
if CH3CH2H2-, it's butryic acid
etc. from the names of the hydrocarbons

CH4 = methane
CH3-CH3 = ethane
CH3-CH2-CH3 = propane
CH3-CH2-CH2-CH3 = butane
etc

There are a whole series of organic functional groups. in the source section, I've attached a link to the wikipedia reference which sort of explains some of them...

anyway. without knowing something about the structure of the molecule it's a bit difficult to name the compound from the empirical formula (C6H12O6 is an empirical formula - it just tells relative amounts of C, H and O but not the structure). best guess is glucose. link to wikipedia showing structure is in the ref also....

by the way. acetic acid is not vinegar. acetic acid is CH3CO2H. vinegar is a solution of acetic acid (usually less than 15% or so - white vinegar is 5%), water, flavorings, colorants, etc. the most notable smell of vinegar is the smell of acetic acid...

good luck....

mixmaster. vinegar is not the common name for acetic acid. technically, there are two usual nomenclatures for organic molecules. common and IUPAC. the common name for acetic acid is acetic acid. the IUPAC is ethanoic acid.

in cooking, when we say "table salt" we usually mean sodium chloride. at the same time, when we say vinegar, we usually mean a bottle labeled vinegar. which is a solution of acetic acid, water, flavorings, etcetera. There are many many many types of vinegars as well. rice wine, red wine, white wine, balsamic, white, etc. each contains acetic acid + other stuff...

Answer 2

CH3COOH is acetic acid or ethanoic acid.

Vinegar is 5% acetic acid. , Acetic acid is not vinegar,

In oranic chemistry you memorize the names of the chains by how many carbons they have and whether or not they have double or triple bonds. Then you memorize the endings for particular types of compounds, such as COOH is acid, OH is alcohol, then there are the ketones, aldehydes, etc. Then you can name them.

C6H12O6, glucose, comes in a straight line structure or a ring. Glucose formula is one that is required knowledge in early chemistry and biology.

Answer 3

First you notice it has two carbons, that tells you that its systematic name begins with eth , three carbons prop , four carbons but and so on. Next you need to look at the carbon-carbon bond. Whether it is single, double or tripple bonds. which means the next syllable would have -an-, -en- or -yn- respectively. In the above case, it is -an- meaning so far we have formulated ethan from the given formula. Now look at the functional group. it has COOH! that is an -oic acid . If you had -OH- this would be an -ol- group or alcohol and -COO- is an ester and so forth. Hence we can now add -oic acid to ethan that we formulated earlier. thus the name becomes ethanoic acid. Chemistry 11. Raphael

Answer 4

You could try the Handbook of Chemistry & Physics. There is an index of formulas. You would look under C2H4O2. Vinegar comes from Old French: vin = wine, egre = sour. Vinegar is made by letting wine ferment beyond ethyl alcohol to acetic acid.

Answer 5

Chemical Name For Ch3cooh

Answer 6

It ends with a COOH group, so it's an organic acid. It has 2 groups in it (2 Cs), so it's an eth- gtoup. Therefore, it's ethonic acid. Because it's so common, it also has a non-systimatic name of acetic acid, the acid in vinegar. C6H12O6 is a carbohydrate, so it's a completely different problem (it's glucose)

Answer 7

vinegar is the common name, just as salt is the common name for sodium chloride.
The names of many compounds developed historically before there was a system of nomenclature established.

There are various nomenclature systems.
Systematic names is one.
nomenclature for nonmetal
nomenclature for acids
nomenclature for Ionic compounds
nomenclature for oxyanions
nomenclature for hydrates

Wow so many nomenclature methods. now I am confused!

prefix words mono, di, tri, tetra combined with the root word and sufix words ide, ate. are used.

But the example which you give, I recognize as sugar, is called D-glucopyranosyl.

so this leads us to Organic chemistry.
Organic chemistry is the study of compounds consisting mainly of carbon and hydrogen.

hey guess what sugar has a lot of carbon and hydrogen
maybe its an organic compound and it probably has its own nomenclature system.

Answer 8

Whilst the others have the right idea, C6H12O6 does not unambigiously describe a single structure. There are many compounds that have that molecular formula, see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=C6H12O6&oldid=153475411.

Answer 9

It can also be written as C2H4O2, it's called acetic acid. Vinegar is its, umm.... common name.