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Topic 4 · Organic chemistry

The chemistry of carbon compounds: crude oil and its fractions, alkanes and alkenes, alcohols, carboxylic acids, esters, and the polymers made from all of them.

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16 lessons, covering 50 specification statements.

What you need to know — the 50 statements, and where each one is taught

Every statement this topic carries, in the specification's own numbering, with Incandio's restatement of what it asks and the lesson that discharges it. Tick them off against your own copy of the specification: this is the topic's revision checklist, not a summary of it. Incandio is aligned to this specification. It is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson, and it reproduces none of Pearson's wording — the statement numbers are given so you can check every lesson against your own copy.

The lessons

• What Organic Chemistry Is — Two facts about carbon generate several million compounds — and three words keep them in order. (4.1, 4.2, 4.3)
• Naming, Drawing And Classifying — A name that tells you the structure, a method that finds every isomer, and three words that cover every organic reaction here. (4.4, 4.5, 4.6)
• Crude Oil And Its Fractions — One mixture, separated by boiling point into six useful materials — and one causal chain that explains every trend down the column. (4.7, 4.8, 4.9, 4.10)
• Burning Fuels — Two ways a hydrocarbon can burn, and why one of them fills a room with a gas you cannot smell. (4.11, 4.12, 4.13)
• Pollutants And Acid Rain — One pollutant comes out of the fuel and one comes out of the air — and telling them apart decides which fix works. (4.14, 4.15, 4.16)
• Cracking — Breaking long molecules nobody wants into short ones everybody does — and the reason a refinery has to. (4.17, 4.18)
• Alkanes — The family that is already full — what saturation means, and the one reaction that gets past it. (4.19, 4.20, 4.21, 4.22)
• Alkenes — Two hydrogens missing, one double bond gained — and a family that is far more useful for it. (4.23, 4.24, 4.25, 4.26)
• Alkene Reactions And The Bromine Test — The double bond opens, both bromine atoms join on, and an orange colour disappears — which is how you tell the two families apart. (4.27, 4.28)
• Alcohols — One –OH group changes everything about a chain of carbons — and there are three quite different ways to take it further. (4.29, 4.30, 4.31)
• Making Ethanol — Two industrial routes to the same molecule — one grown in a vat, one built from crude oil, and neither obviously better. (4.32, 4.33)
• Carboxylic Acids — The –COOH group, the acid reactions it gives, and the reason a bottle of vinegar is on the specification. (4.34, 4.35, 4.36, 4.37)
• Esters And How To Make One — An alcohol and an acid, a drop of catalyst and some gentle warmth — and a smell that tells you it worked. (4.38, 4.39, 4.40, 4.43)
• Working Out Esters, And What They Are For — Given the two parents, deduce the ester; given the ester, work backwards — and find out why a strawberry sweet smells of anything at all. (4.41, 4.42)
• Addition Polymers — Millions of double bonds opening onto each other, nothing given off — and a material that will not go away afterwards. (4.44, 4.45, 4.46, 4.47)
• Condensation Polymers — Two reactive ends instead of one, an ester link made over and over, and a molecule of water lost every single time. (4.48, 4.49, 4.50)

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