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chem question

J

jobberd

Banned
how in the world would i balance or even predict the products of an equation like this:
(NH4)2 CO3 + KHCO3 + C10H20O
?
 
are you supposed to assume it's partly redox, or some decomposition of a kind or what? need more info to predict the products
 
id assume its some sort of double displacement reaction. the three compounds are the active ingredients of Buckley's medicine, and I'm supposed to have the chemical reaction of it 😕
 
Strange question (maybe missing details?) but I'll put on my Chemist hat and try to help you out.

I'm assuming that these take place in an aqueous environment.

C10H20O is a loooooong carbon chain with an OH at the end. It should be a verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry very very weak acid. So you can safely assume that with a carbon chain of 10, this is a non-polar molecule and hence will hardly dissociate.

NH4CO3 and KHCO3 will fully dissociate in water because most compounds (if not all) with NH4 and alkali metals fully dissociate in water.

So the end product will be.. nothing. Just a bunch of ions and that long organic compound that hardly dissociates. I think it's called decanoic acid, but I could be wrong. It's been ages since I took my last Chem course.

Happy with my response? 🙂 It came from a History major. 😉
 
a dbl displacement would just be an easy AB + CD <-> AD + CB so im guessing it involves little more than that

never seen that C10H20O (google says menthol?) before...and with so many carbons and hydrogens, there would be an almost infinite number of possible products
 
wow joohang, im still tryin to make sense of what you said 🙂. Believe it or not, this is grade 11 chemistry. But I think the teacher didn't quite think things through when he assigned this question because we wouldn't be able to figure out half of what you said. Maybe I need to reread the question or something....
edit: C10H20O was menthol. pulled that from www.chemfinder.com
 


<< never seen that C10H20O (google says menthol?) before...and with so many carbons and hydrogens, there would be an almost infinite number of possible products >>


The most likely compound I came up with was a chain of 10 carbons surrounded by hydrogens with an OH on one end. It's a form a alkanoic acid, so I think it's named decanoic acid.
 
Cool. Grade 11 sounds about right, although I did these in IB Chem. 🙂

To summarize:
1) In an aqueous solution, any compound with NH4 and alkali metals ALWAYS dissociate into ions.
2) The carbon compound is what I described in my other post.
3) I doubt that this is a redox reaction.
 


<< Cool. Grade 11 sounds about right, although I did these in IB Chem.

To summarize:
1) In an aqueous solution, any compound with NH4 and alkali metals ALWAYS dissociate into ions.
2) The carbon compound is what I described in my other post.
3) I doubt that this is a redox reaction. >>

great 🙂 and since everyone is being so helpful today, might i ask one more question? would menthol be the common name or the IUPAC name? and how would i determine the other one?
 


<<

<< never seen that C10H20O (google says menthol?) before...and with so many carbons and hydrogens, there would be an almost infinite number of possible products >>


The most likely compound I came up with was a chain of 10 carbons surrounded by hydrogens with an OH on one end. It's a form a alkanoic acid, so I think it's named decanoic acid. >>

well there should be quite a few possible structures for it...it can be just a simple alcohol -OH or aldehyde -CHO, but can also be a ring and others...

but since this is just 11th grade, i doubt there's any organic synthesis going on here...but that just means this C10H20O can readily dissociate any which way and it becomes a stoichiometric question where there are infinite possibilities
 
menthol would be a common name.

IUPAC names often have 1,2,2,4-type position indicators with a bunch of incomprehensible looooooooooong names that always mess up my spell checker in Word. 🙂

Common names sound like English and are often short. IUPAC names are very structured and systematic. They are often long, but you can break them apart into prefixes and build a structure out of it.
 


<< well there should be quite a few possible structures for it...it can be just a simple alcohol -OH or aldehyde -CHO, but can also be a ring and others... >>


Oh right. I forgot about aldehyde. 🙂

And you're right. There could be all sorts of possibilities with double bonds, rings, and whatnot.
 
well i have no idea about the products, but i agree with joohang completely about the other two species dissociating in water

if c10h20O is menthol, the iupac should be 5-methyl-2- (1-methylethyl) cyclohexanol

it's a 6 C-ring with a methyl CH3 and an isopropyl (aka methylethyl) CH3CH3CH group, and an OH on the other end
 
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