Let's learn how to name nitriles. Nitriles are honestly the easiest functional group to name because there's nothing tricky about them. All you're going to do is you're going to take the name of your alkane chain and you're going to add the suffix nitrile to the name. Guess what? You're not even going to drop the E, so don't. Don't drop the E. Just literally add the word nitrile at the end. Substituents are named using numbers. They're located using numbers. In this case, this would be a 5 carbon chain that has a nitrile group on it. This would be pentanenitrile. Notice that I kept the E. Don't drop it because then it's going to look weird. Pentanenitrile and that's it. We've got a practice problem. Go ahead and see if you can name it and then I'll give you the answer.
Naming Nitriles - Online Tutor, Practice Problems & Exam Prep
Nitriles are a piece of cake when it comes to naming. It's as easy as adding the word "nitrile" to our name. Let's take a look.
Nitrile Nomenclature
Video transcript
Name the structure
Video transcript
The only possibly tricky thing about naming nitriles is that you have to remember to include that first carbon in the carbon chain, meaning that this is your first carbon and it's part of a 4 carbon chain. This is going to be butanenitrile. Now I just need to name my substituents which appear to be 2,3-dimethyl. It's going to be 2,3-dimethyl butanenitrile. So easy. Don't you wish every topic was like this in organic chemistry? Here's another one. Go ahead and try to draw it and then I'll give you the answer.
Draw the molecule
Video transcript
Here we go, 6 carbon chain. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Now that 6 carbon is part of the nitrile, so then I would draw C≡N. Six carbons. This is my one carbon, so then I have a C2-amino that's going to be NH2 and a C4-bromo. That's it. All right. Let's move on to the next topic.
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