Organic Chemistry

Organometallics in living systems

Figure 207 Lewis Diagram of Carbon Dioxide, Illustrating Double Bonds and Free
Electrons

In organic chemistry, there are alotof carbons in every molecule, generally, so organic
chemists by convention do not draw every single carbon in every molecule. The same is true
of hydrogens attached to the carbons; it is twice the annoyance to draw thirty hydrogens in
a fatty acid than it is to draw the fifteen carbons. Therefore, in organic chemistry, carbon
atoms are assumed to be wherever a line or line segment begins or ends. Furthermore,
enough hydrogen atoms are assumed to be attached to any carbon not marked with a + or

• sign (indicating an ionic charge) to bring that carbon’s total number of bonds to four. At
  first this notation may be confusing, but the shorthand method rapidly proves its worth.

Figure 208 Some common organic chemistry compounds and reagents, and their
drawings