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Reactivity of aldehydes and ketones

Electron distribution in aldehydes and ketones and how it influences reactivity. Created by Jay.

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  • leaf green style avatar for user Courtney Smith
    In this video you talked about how the R groups are electron donating (at ). However, in the last video (Physical Properties of Aldehydes and Ketones) you also said that the aldehyde had a lower boiling point than the ketone. Wouldn't the dipole moment in the ketone be smaller because there are two electron-donating groups attached to the partially positive carbon as opposed to only one electron-donating group attached to the partially positive carbon in the aldehyde? Wouldn't the dipole moment in the aldehyde be larger then? And wouldn't that also cause a stronger dipole-dipole interaction between more partially positively and partially negatively charged atoms? Overall, wouldn't this cause the aldehyde to have stronger intermolecular interactions and thus a higher boiling point? Please explain if not.
    (11 votes)
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    • spunky sam blue style avatar for user Ernest Zinck
      Alkyl groups donate electron density to the carbonyl carbon, but the electronegative O atom grabs most of this density.
      The O atom in a ketone therefore has a greater negative charge, so the C=O bond is more polar than in an aldehyde.
      The dipole moments of aldehydes are about 2.5 D, but the dipole moments of ketones are about 2.9 D.
      Ketones have higher intermolecular forces and therefore higher boiling points than aldehydes of similar molecular mass.
      For example, acetaldehyde boils at 49 °C, while acetone boils at 56 °C.
      (8 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user dsengupta0599
    why formaldehyde is a sp2 hybridisation ?the picture shows that oxygen has 2 lone pair btw the video shows that 3 sigma bond +0 lone pair in the 0.46 second pls ans me?is it right or no
    (2 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user ttvo618
    In one video " Comparing pKa values of aldehydes and ketones", KA explained that aldehyde is more acidic than ketone because it has one less alkyl donating group. In ketone, having more donating electron groups destabilizes the negative charge and thus ketone is not as acidic as aldehyde, which is a stable CB due to no donating electron group.

    Now in this video, Jay explained the opposite in which more R electron donating groups stabilizes the carbocation because oxygen can withdraw more electrons from the R groups. Thus they are more stable and less polarized than aldehydes

    My questions are:

    1) I'm confused as to why one video says ketone is stable and the other says it's not because of the electron donating groups? One thing I'm certain is that to have a strong acid, its CB gotta be stable.

    2) Reactivity is pretty much the same as acidity in which the more polarized you are, the more likely you will donate electrons, thus making you more acidic? in this case, ketone is less polarized and less acidic than aldehyde.
    (3 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user kdagi700
    How to differentiate between an aldehyde and a ketone
    (2 votes)
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  • leaf green style avatar for user bilalahmed6781
    what is hydrogen bonding?
    (1 vote)
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    • aqualine ultimate style avatar for user Ahmed Magdy
      this is a sort of attraction between a partially negative and partially positive atoms in different molecules .. for example in water the oxygen atom is more electronegative than hydrogen so they withdraw the electrons of the bond towards it and gain a partially negative charge for each bond while the hydrogen gains a partially positive charge so due to the different charges the hydrogen bond occur between hydrogen in a water molecule and oxygen in another water molecule
      (3 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user progress
    i would greatly appreciate if someone could please tell me how the rxn proceeds when an NH3 attacks a ketone please. Thank you.
    (2 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user Anudeep Methuku
    At
    jay said about steric number what is a steric no
    (1 vote)
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  • piceratops tree style avatar for user aadeoshu
    Is sp2 always 120 degrees and sp3 always 109 degrees?
    (1 vote)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user zachary.mills13
    At shouldn't the stereo-chemistry for the R and R' group be inverted because it is an SN2 type reaction?
    (1 vote)
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  • male robot donald style avatar for user Ishaq
    if they ask a question about why ketones are more stable than aldehydes, how can we answer that? im talking about edexcel a2 chemistry unit 4 syllabus
    (1 vote)
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    • piceratops ultimate style avatar for user skofljica
      ketones are more stable because alkyl groups are weak electron donor groups so they can compensate partially positive charge on the carbonyl carbon donating some of the negative charge. aldehydes have only one alkyl group so the compensating is much lower.
      (1 vote)

Video transcript

Voiceover: Before we get into the reactivity of aldehydes and ketones, lets first review the bonding in a carbonyl. A carbonyl is the carbon double bonded to the oxygen, so lets focus then on this carbon right here on the formaldehyde molecule. Lets find the hybridization stage of this carbon. So I'm going to draw an arrow to this. And to find the hybridization state, one way to do it is to think about the steric number. Where the steric number is the number of sigma bonds plus the number of lone pairs of electrons. So to that carbon, let's count up some sigma bonds here. So we have a sigma bond to this hydrogen, a sigma bond to this hydrogen, and in our double bond here, one of those is a sigma bond and one of those is a pi bond. So we have a total of three sigma bonds. So three sigma bonds and zero lone pairs of electrons gives us a steric number of three, which we know means it must have three hybrid orbitals. And so this carbon is sp-two hybridized. So if I'm going to go ahead and draw that carbon over here. So that carbon is sp-two hybridized, which means it has three sp-two hybrid orbitals. And we go ahead and put those three sp-two hybrid orbitals in here like that, alright. And we know that carbon has un-hybridized p orbitals. And we go ahead and draw in that un-hybridized p orbital right here. Next lets think about those hydrogens. So these hydrogens ... Let me go ahead and put them in red here. So these hydrogens right here are bonded to that carbonyl carbon. Those have an electron in s orbital, which we know is spherically shaped, so I can put a s orbital in here. And the overlap of course would be sigma bond. And so I have those sigma bonds right there. Next lets look at the hybridization of the carbonyl oxygen. So same idea. Number of sigma bonds plus number of lone pairs of electrons. So there is one sigma bond between the oxygen and the carbon, and then we have two lone pairs of electrons. So one sigma bond and two lone pairs of electrons gives us a steric number of three, which means that oxygen must be sp-two hybridized as well. So the oxygen has three sp-two hybrid orbitals. So let me go ahead and draw those. So put in the oxygen right here. Oxygen has three sp-two hybrid orbitals. Let me go ahead and draw in those sp-two hybrid orbitals. So there is one, and I have these two over here. And so the lone pairs of electrons on the oxygen ... One lone pair is going into this sp-two hybrid orbital. The other is going to go into this sp-two hybrid orbital. And then we have an overlap right here for this carbon, so that is of course the sigma bond between the carbon and the oxygen. If the oxygen is sp-two hybridized, it must also have an un-hybridized p orbital. So I'm going to draw in the un-hybridized p orbital on the oxygen here like that. And then we can see that the pi bond comes from the side by side overlap of our p orbitals. And so let me go ahead and highlight the pi bond over here. So and that double bond again on the dot structure for formaldehyde. One of those is a sigma bond and one of those is a pi bond. And over here we can see that on the right. So this represents the bonding of the carbonyl. And that is going to be important when we think about things like molecular geometry. So if the carbon is sp-two hybridized, then we know that these atoms lie on the same plane here, and we have bond angles close to 120 degrees. We will talk more about that in a few minutes. Next lets think about the polarization of that carbonyl. So once again we look at the ... Lets go down to this generic aldehyde here, and then we have this carbonyl carbon attached to this oxygen. Oxygen is more electronegative than carbon, so it's going to withdraw some electron density. We show the polarization with this arrow here. The arrow points in the direction of the electrons, so the electrons are going to be pulled closer to the oxygen, and so the oxygen is going to get a little bit partially negative. So we draw a partial negative sign here. The oxygen is withdrawing some electron density from my carbonyl carbon right here, so my carbonyl carbon is going to be partially positive like that. And for an aldehyde ... We know that alkyl groups are electron donating. So our group right here on the left, you can think about that as being a little bit electron donating. Which means our group is going to donate some electron density. So I will draw an arrow showing that some electron density is being donated by the R group. So remember when we did [carbo-cat-ines], and we put alkyl groups on our [carbo-cat-ines]. The more alkyl groups we had, the more the [carbo-cat-ine] was stabilized. So here we have one R group donating a little bit of electron density attempting to stabilize that partially positive charge on the carbonyl carbon. Lets go over here to the ketone, and we have a similar situation. We have once again the oxygen withdrawing some electron density from our carbonyl carbon. So we have a partial negative on our oxygen, and our carbonyl carbon gets a partial positive. But this time we have two R groups. So this R group on the left can donate some electron density. This R group on the right can donate some electron density. And once again, think about the [carbo-cat-ines]. The more alkyl groups we had the more our full positive charge on our [carbo-cat-ine] was stabilized. Similar idea here. The more R groups you have, the more you stabilize the partial positive charge on your carbonyl. And so because of that, ketones are a little bit more stable than aldehydes just thinking about the polarization. So there is more to polarization in an aldehyde carbonyl than in a ketone. Alright, so now lets put these ideas together. Let's think about a nucleophilic addition reaction to a carbonyl, and so I'm going to go ahead and draw a ketone down here. And I know that the geometry around the carbon ketone is trigonal planar. Because we talked about the bonding already. So let me go ahead and draw this in. So we are going to have ... Lets make a R prime group coming out add some space and make a R group going away from this space. And we know that these all are on the same plane like that. So I'm drawing in my plane here. We also know that there is a polarization of the carbonyl. So the oxygen is more negative and the carbon is a little bit positive like that. So the carbon is partially positive. That means that ones electrons, it's electrophilic, and that is extremely important when you are talking about reactions. Nucleophilic additions to carbonyls. So a nucleophile is going to come along. So lets go ahead a draw in a nucleophile here. So lets go ahead and make it a negatively charged nucleophile like that. So the nucleophile is going to be attracted to positive things, right? Opposite charges attract. And so the nucleophile is going to attack the partially positive carbonyl carbon like that. And when it does so, it is going to perform a bond and therefore kick off these pi electrons here off onto this oxygen. So lets go ahead and draw the results of our nucleophilic attack here. So we are going to show a bond form between the carbon an the nucleophile. So let me go ahead and highlight those electrons here. So these electrons right here on the nucleophile have now formed a bond between the nucleophile and the carbon. And, lets see. We still have our oxygen. Our oxygen used to have two lone pairs of electrons, but it picked up another lone pair of electrons, so negative one a formal charge now, and then we have our R groups. So lets go ahead and draw our R groups over here. So we have R prime and then we have R over here like that. and so this will be an intermediate. And if we think about the geometry of this carbon. Let me go ahead a label it here. So the geometry of this carbon now, if I calculate the steric number I have four sigma bonds. And so four sigma bonds means a steric number for four hybrid orbitals, so this carbon must be sp-3 hybridized now. So a sp-3 hybridized carbon. And so therefore your bond angle is closer to 109 degrees. So in particular we are going to think about these R groups here. and so this angle right in here is somewhere around 109 degrees. So I'm going to go ahead and write that approximately 109 degrees. And so the bond angle has changed. So go back over here to this situation on the left. This carbon right here was sp-two hybridized, and therefore everything was planar, and so these bond angles were approximately equal at approximately 120 degrees. And so we've gone from approximately 120 degrees to 109 degrees for our intermediate here. So over here on the right our sp-3 hybridized carbon has tetrahedral geometry so we call this our tetrahedral intermediate. So let me go ahead and write that. This is our tetrahedral intermediate, and it is an alk oxide and ion. And so now we can compare aldehydes and ketones in terms of reactivity. And so the first factor is the polarization of the carbonyl. So we've already seen that aldehydes are more polarized than ketones, and so therefore the carbonyl carbon is a little more positive. And that means the nucleophile can attack that positive charge a little bit more, and so that's one reason why aldehydes are more reactive than ketones. The polarization of the carbonyl. Another reason has to do with steric hindrance. So when you think about a ketone, and lets say that we have some big bulky R groups here on this ketone, so these bulky R groups might prevent the nucleophile from attacking. So it turns out there is an optimum angle for the nucleophile to attack the carbonyl carbon, and if you have bulky R groups they might prevent that. They also would interfere with the formation of the tetrahedral intermediate because if I had big bulky R groups and I'm changing the bond angle from 120 degrees, approximately 120 degrees over here on the left to 109 degrees, those bulky R groups have to be closer together in space and they would of course repel. And there is some steric hindrance on formation of your tetrahedral intermediate as well. So for those two reasons we observe aldehydes to be more reactive than ketones.