1. NAMING
HYDROCARBONS
By Christopher Jones

2. WORDS TO KNOW
• Alkane- A hydrocarbon without a double bond, triple bond or ring structure.
• Alkene- A hydrocarbon with one or more double bonds and no triple bond.
• Alkyne- A hydrocarbon with one or more triple bonds.
• Double bond- Covalent bond resulting from the sharing of four electrons (two pairs)
between two atoms.
• Triple bond- A chemical linkage consisting of three covalent bonds between
two atoms of a molecule
• Substituents- A carbon group hanging off of a parent chain in an hydrocarbon.

3. HYDROGENS
• There must be 4 hydrogens bonded on each carbon atom.
• Every single bond counts as one the rest are but next to the carbon
• Example Ch3-Ch2-Ch3
• Double bonds count as two hydrogens
• Example Ch2=Ch2-Ch3
• Triple bond, which I will use + to represent, counts as 3 hydrogens
• Example Ch+C-Ch3

4. STEP ONE
• The first step in naming an alkane is to find the longest concurrent chain in the formula.
• This will be you parent chain.

5. STEP TWO
• Name the substituents of the alkane

6. NAMING SUBSTITUENTS
• A one carbon substituent is called methyl
• A two carbon substituent is called ethyl
• A three carbon substituent is called propyl
• There are more but these are the most common found.

7. STEP THREE
• Number your parent chain making sure that the numbers the substituents land on add up
to the smallest sum.

8. FOURTH STEP
• Naming the alkane, list the numbers where substituents lie, what the substituent is and
the name of the parent chain
• PARENT CHAIN NAMES
• Single carbon = methane
• Two carbon = ethane
• Three carbon = propane
• Four carbon = butane
• Five carbon = pentane
• Six carbon = hexane
• Seven carbon = Heptane
• Eight carbon = octane

9. SOURCES
• Text: Timberlake, Chemistry and introduction to General, Organic, &
Biological Chemistry 8 th edition
• Web: chemistry dictionary

10. This has been my presentation on naming hydrocarbons.