can compound chemicals be broken down?

Question

Like, if you look at the back of a shampoo bottle or something, there’s always a ridiculously long name for an ingredient.Are these sorts of ingredients able to be broken down into elements? Kind of like how dihydrogen monoxide is just the chemical name for water.

In: 4

Answer 1

Yes, any chemical compound can be broken down into its constituent elements if you try hard enough. Sometimes you have to try pretty hard though…

The simplest way of breaking up organic molecules (carbon chains) is usually to burn them – enough heat and oxygen and they’ll usually break up into water and CO2 (or CO if you’re running a little low on Oxygen).

The long and complicated names are just [structured ways of describing what the molecule is made of](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IUPAC_nomenclature_of_organic_chemistry). For organic molecules, they’re basically chains of carbon molecules – Carbons can have 4 bonds, that is they have 4 points that they can join to something else. The default is that all the open joints are filled with hydrogen unless the name describes something else, in fact, the simplified way of drawing these only shows the “something else” and it is assumed that anything left over has a hydrogen on it.

For example, “Eth” means there are 2 carbons and “ane” means the simple chain form”. Ethane is 2 carbons joined together with the rest of the available spaces filled with Hydrogen. Ethene is 2 carbons joined together more tightly with the rest hydrogen (double bond between the carbon atoms). Ethanol is just Ethane with one Alcohol group (Oxygen Hydrogen pair) in place of a hydrogen. Methanol is the same as Ethanol except there’s only one carbon. Propane is the same as Ethane but with 3 carbons and so on (Butane, Pentane, Hexane, Septane, Octane etc).

Once you get more complicated there’s other language to help describe the position and shape of the chain. Cyclo on the front means the chain is a loop instead of a straight chain, cis means that if you’ve got 2 extras added on they’re on the same side, trans means they’re on opposite sides. A number usually denotes where on the chain the next name is (so “Propan 1 ol” means the OH is on the end, “Propan 2 ol” has it on the second carbon (middle) etc).

There’s also special names for some forms like Benzene for a 6 carbon ring with every second bond a double or Alcohol for the OH group.