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Organic Chemistry I

Classifying and oxidising alcohols

  • 3 things to know
  • Papers 2 and 3

Overview

Classifying alcohols as primary, secondary or tertiary, their combustion, making halogenoalkanes with PCl₅, potassium bromide and sulfuric acid, or red phosphorus and iodine, oxidation by acidified potassium dichromate(VI) to aldehydes, carboxylic acids and ketones, Fehling's and Benedict's tests for aldehydes, and elimination to alkenes.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Process

What does oxidation give for each class of alcohol?

Numbers

What reagents are used to convert an alcohol into a bromoalkane?

Key term

What decides whether an alcohol counts as primary, secondary or tertiary?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What decides whether an alcohol counts as primary, secondary or tertiary?

    Model answer

    Based on the number of carbon atoms bonded to the carbon bearing the hydroxyl group.

  2. 2

    What defines a primary alcohol in terms of the carbon bearing the hydroxyl group?

    Model answer

    The hydroxyl group is attached to a carbon bonded to one other carbon atom (or none in the case of methanol).

  3. 3

    How many other carbon atoms are bonded to the carbon bearing the hydroxyl group in a secondary alcohol?

    Model answer

    Two other carbon atoms.

  4. 4

    What structural feature characterises a tertiary alcohol?

    Model answer

    The hydroxyl group is attached to a carbon bonded to three other carbon atoms.

  5. 5

    What products are formed when an alcohol undergoes complete combustion in air?

    Model answer

    Carbon dioxide and water.

  6. 6

    What type of organic product is formed when an alcohol reacts with phosphorus pentachloride?

    Model answer

    A chloroalkane.

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AAtomisation turns each element into gaseous atoms.
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