Much of the remainder of your study of organic chemistry will be taken up with learning about how the different functional groups tend to behave in organic reactions. For now, we will only worry about drawing and recognizing each functional group, as depicted by Lewis and line structures. Because of their importance in understanding organic chemistry, functional groups have characteristic names that often carry over in the naming of individual compounds incorporating specific groupsĪs we progress in our study of organic chemistry, it will become extremely important to be able to quickly recognize the most common functional groups, because they are the key structural elements that define how organic molecules react. A particular functional group will almost always display its characteristic chemical behavior when it is present in a compound. Gradually they will become familiar, and eventually you will recognize them automatically.įunctional groups are atoms or small groups of atoms (two to four) that exhibit a characteristic reactivity. We expect that you will need to refer back to tables at the end of Section 3.1 quite frequently at first, as it is not really feasible to learn the names and structures of all the functional groups and compound types at one sitting. The concept of functional groups is a very important one. Functional Groups with Multiple Bonds to Heteroatoms.Functional Groups with Single Bonds to Heteroatoms.