So for the next 6 functional groups, I want to clarify something. Have you guys heard the word carbonyl? Maybe your professor calls it carbonyl. That's totally fine. However you want to say it, that's fine. In fact, you're probably going to notice this semester that I say some things very differently from the way your professor says them. Maybe because your professor speaks a different language primarily, or just because people have different ways of saying these molecules. But, I'm just going to say carbonyl. Carbonyl looks like this: it's a C double bond O. And a carbonyl is not a functional group. It is only a component of many functional groups. So if I say the word carbonyl, it doesn't mean that that's a functional group; it just means that it's part of the functional group. I'm going to talk first about functional groups without carbonyls and then we're going to add some carbonyls and see how that changes them.
The third functional group we're going to talk about today is alcohols. Alcohols are defined as ROH, any carbon group that's attached to an OH. There are lots of different alcohols, but the important thing to know is that the way you name the degree on them is the same as with hydrogens. So now we know that alkyl halides and alcohols are both named exactly the same in terms of degrees. Here I have an alcohol for you—please don't try to drink this alcohol. It would probably kill you. The only alcohol that's safe for drinking is ethanol. Even if you remove one carbon to make it methanol, it's toxic. Like, 50 grams of that and you're dead. So, they're not all fun and games. We actually use these in the lab a lot. What type of alcohol would this be, though? What do you guys think? So it's attached to one carbon. Remember that we say you always look at the carbon that carbon is attached to. That carbon is attached to only 1 carbon. This is the same as hydrogen, so this is going to be a primary alcohol.
Then let's talk about the next functional group, amines. Amines work in a way that they actually have carbon groups directly attached to the N. There are a lot of different types of amines you could have. One of the most common would just be having NH3. But if you add R groups to it, that's also an amine. So if I had RNH2, that is also an amine. If I switched out hydrogens for R's, that would still be an amine. So let's say that I had R2NH. That just means I'm replacing one of the H's with an R. And then finally, I could even have R3N. All of these would be types of amines. As long as it's basically a carbon group, carbons or hydrogens attached to a nitrogen, it would be an amine. The degree of the amine is actually determined the same way as with carbon. So in this case, what type of amine would this be, this ring structure? It would be a secondary amine because the N is directly attached to 1, 2 carbons. That's a huge distinction.
Finally, we have ether. Ether is abbreviated ROR. An easy way that I always remembered it is "I'm an ether. Roar." That was awkward, right? So anyway, I'm an ether, you're scary, blow up. Ethers actually do blow up. So maybe that helps you remember. All it is, is an oxygen between 2 carbon groups. Honestly, we don't need to name degrees for these because there's only one type. Just remember ROR, and you're good to go.