Organic Chemistry

Organic Chemistry

It is a very important branch of chemistry which deals with most of the carbon compounds.

Introduction

Reaction is made up of reactants and products. Reactant is made up of substrate and reagent. A substrate is chemical species which reacts with a reagent to generate a product. A reagent is a substance or compound added to a system to cause a chemical reaction.

Electrophile and nucleophile

To understand electrophile and nucleophile, first we need to understand what is meant by "phile". "Phile" litterally means loving.

Therefore electrophile means electron loving or electron deficient molecules while nucleophile means nucleus loving or electron rich molecules. Electrophile molecules are all positively charged while nucleophile are all negatively charged.

Example: NO₂⁺ is an electrophile while CN^- is a nucleophile.

Poll

Which of the following are electrophiles :

• CH₃⁺,I^-

• H₃O⁺,ZnCl₂

• CN^-,I^-

• CH3⁺,Cl⁺