31 Mar
2012
31 Mar
'12
11:41 a.m.
True. (Why the alkali metals? Because those are the
only ones I was
certain formed stable hydroxides. My inorganic chemistry is not what
The alkaline earth metals (magnesium, calcium, etc) do as well, I think.
I don;t know if tehr metals do off the top of my head.
it could be.) But there are lots of organic compounds
with hydroxyls
which aren't alcohols in any meaningful sense, such as sugars or, yes,
Sure.
OK, let me re-state the original question.
There are many organic compounds that are classed as alcohols. Some of
them are found in food. DO cultures that prohibit 'alcohol' only prohibit
ethanol, or do then prohibit these too?
the carboxylic acids. (I was wandering around
wikipedia and stumbled
across mellitic acid. Fascinating compound.)
IIRC, that's a benzene rign with a caboxylic acid group on each carhon.
If I am right, there's soemthing even stranger, mellitic anhydride. You
take the above molecule and eleimite 3 molecules of water from it (to
over-simplify things). Ther result is a benzene ring with a C=O on each
location, and those are pairwise joind by further oxygen atoms. The
result reacts violently with water, which is hardly suprising.
The oddity is that the formula for it is C_12 O_9 . In other words,
carbon and oxygen only. Is this a legitimate oxide of carbon? If so, is
it organic (oxides of carbon like CO and CO_2 are normally taken to be
inorganic).
As ever, when you think you have a classification for things, there are
borderline cases :-)
Yes, I thought
as much... Why does 'Is electricity fire' from SYJMF
keep running through my mind?
I was thinking much the same thing, only less formalized. (In
particular, I didn't recall the source of the story.)