{"id":46,"date":"2012-07-04T21:40:23","date_gmt":"2012-07-04T21:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/blog\/?p=46"},"modified":"2015-02-03T07:13:36","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T07:13:36","slug":"what-are-primary-secondary-and-tertiary-carbons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/blog\/what-are-primary-secondary-and-tertiary-carbons\/","title":{"rendered":"What are primary, secondary and tertiary carbons?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Q&amp;A from our students:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Question:<\/strong> What are primary, secondary and tertiary carbons? I know that sounds like a basic questions, but were just beginning to learn about alkanes and stuff and I don\u2019t get it. Thanks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Answer:<\/strong> It is a great questions and we&#8217;re am happy you asked because there are a lot of students who are confused about this subject. Let\u2019s try to clear the air. Because here at <a href=\"studyorgo.com\" target=\"_blank\">StudyOrgo.com<\/a> &#8211; we love to clear the air and make things easy!<\/p>\n<p>We use the terms primary, secondary, and tertiary to refer to the substitution level that a given carbon has in a molecule. In other words, these terms are used to describe how many other carbons a given carbon is attached to.<\/p>\n<p>So to figure out the substitution level of any given carbon, follow these three easy steps:<\/p>\n<p>Step #1: Pick a carbon<\/p>\n<p>Step #2: Count how many carbons are directly attached to it. Other elements such as hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen etc. don\u2019t count.<\/p>\n<p>Step #3: Give it a label:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Primary<\/span> = a carbon attached to only ONE other carbon<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #339966;\">Secondary<\/span>\u00a0 = a carbon attached to only TWO other carbons<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Tertiary <\/span>= a carbon attached to THREE other carbons<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the below example each carbon is color coded using the labels in step #3 above.<\/p>\n<p>Go ahead give it a try!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Akane-primary-secondary-tertiary.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-45 aligncenter\" title=\"Akane primary-secondary-tertiary\" src=\"http:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Akane-primary-secondary-tertiary.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"189\" height=\"158\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>OK- now bear in mind that hydrogens attached to a given carbon ALSO take on the labels as described in step #3 above.<\/p>\n<p>So we can apply the same principle to the hydrogens:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Primary<\/span> = a hydrogen on a carbon attached to only ONE other carbon<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #339966;\">Secondary<\/span>\u00a0 = a hydrogen on a carbon attached to only TWO other carbons<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Tertiary<\/span> = a hydrogen on a carbon attached to THREE other carbons<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For more on mastering\u00a0alkanes and reactions, use coupon code &#8220;acespring&#8221; to save 10% off the <a title=\"Organic Chemistry help\" href=\"http:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\">highest pass rate organic chemistry program<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may submit a question to our experts by filling out the form\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/contact.php\">HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019re question may be answered in an upcoming blog posting!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Q&amp;A from our students: Question: What are primary, secondary and tertiary carbons? I know that sounds like a basic questions, but were just beginning to learn about alkanes and stuff and I don\u2019t get it. Thanks. Answer: It is a great questions and we&#8217;re am happy you asked because there are a lot of students [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-organic-chemistry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":510,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions\/510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyorgo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}