What is organic chemistry?
Organic chemistry is the study of carbon compounds. That sounds narrow until you notice how much it includes: fuels, plastics, medicines, dyes, detergents, and nearly every molecule inside a living cell. A single element accounts for the largest branch of the subject.
Carbon earns that attention because of how it bonds. It forms four strong covalent bonds, links to itself in chains and rings of almost unlimited length, and tolerates a wide range of other atoms attached along the way. The result is millions of known compounds built from a handful of recurring patterns.
The ideas that organise it
- Hydrocarbons: compounds of carbon and hydrogen only, divided into alkanes, alkenes, alkynes and aromatics
- Functional groups: the reactive clusters, such as alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, carboxylic acids, esters and amines, that decide how a molecule behaves
- Isomerism: same formula, different arrangement, and why that changes properties
- Mechanisms: the step by step account of how bonds break and form during a reaction
- Polymers: small repeating units joined into long chains, natural and synthetic
How to study it
Organic chemistry rewards pattern recognition over memorisation. Learn what a functional group does and you can predict the behaviour of every compound that carries it, which is why the definitions below lead with the idea rather than a list of examples.