Then finally, we have benzene. I've been avoiding benzene for a while now. I haven't really talked a lot about it. But now I want to give it some attention. So, benzene is a type of aromatic compound. Okay? We will not learn about aromatic compounds until Organic Chemistry 2. So I'm not going to explain what that means. I'm just going to ask you to know that it exists. Okay? That's when we actually get to the fun in Organic Chemistry 2. Right? But, for right now just note, be able to recognize it.
And it actually has 2 different names when it's a branch on a larger chain. Okay? If it's just by itself, like the Clutch logo. Okay? If you just see it by itself, that's Benzene. Just say that that's Benzene or you can also call it aromatic.
But when it's part of a larger chain, it gets its own types of branch names. So, for example, when it's directly attached to an R group, the name isn't benzene anymore, it turns into Phenyl. Okay? And Phenyl indicates that I have a benzene directly coming off of a chain. The way that we write it in condensed formula, a lot of times it's as C6H5. Okay? Because it has one hydrogen missing because it's directly attached to a large R group. Okay? And then also it can be abbreviated as Ph. Okay? But this isn't the pH that you saw in acids and bases where you have like a lowercase p and a big H. This is like both of them are lowercase. Okay? Cool.
And then, if there happens to be an extra CH2 group, just like in between the benzene and the ring, then it gets even a different name, and that name is Benzyl. Now this one, to me, is counterintuitive because if I were writing organic chemistry from the very beginning and I saw a benzene group on a chain, I would say, oh, that's a benzyl group because alkyl alkyl, like alkane alkyl. So I would say benzene benzyl.
That makes sense. But it turns out that, for some reason, they decided to name the one attached to it as Phenyl and the one that's one carbon away as Benzyl. So it's kind of flipped from what you would think. And that's why I want to point out that Benzyl always has that CH2 in the middle. The way that we would abbreviate it is as CH2C6H5. So notice that there's that CH2 in there. And then it's also abbreviated as Bn. Okay? Not often, but I have seen that before.
So I've got this long chain with 2 benzenes on it and I want you guys to tell me which one is the phenyl, which one is the benzyl. So go ahead and look at it for a second and then let me know. So this one would be the phenyl because it's directly attached right here. And then this one would be the benzyl because it has one carbon in the middle. It has an extra CH2. Does that make sense?
So that's a benzyl and a phenyl, and that's the way we're going to use them when we're naming benzenes on rings.