Organic Compounds
Organic compound, class of chemical compounds where one or more carbon atoms are covalent bonding with different types of atoms of chemical elements like hydrogen, oxygen, or nitrogen. From a common definition, organic compounds are the chemistry carbon compounds or molecules but many carbon molecules like carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, carbonates, and carbon disulfide are the kingdom of inorganic series. Therefore, the difference between organic and inorganic substances is very complicated.
To differentiate different types of organic and inorganic molecules, the substances are classified into two groups in learning chemistry. Substances which prepared from green plants or animals (living world), substances not prepared from the living world.
Simple examples of pure organic compounds like sugar, starch, alcohol, resins, indigo, methane, ethylene in chemistry known from the earliest history but the chemical formula or reactions of the said molecules are still unknown. With the progress, about the beginning of the eighteenth century Lemery (1675) published a famous science journal, Cours de Chemie. This chemistry journal divided the chemical substances from natural sources into three classes as substances come from minerals, green plants, the animal.
History of Organic Compounds
Lemery’s definition of organic compounds is accepted but very quickly Lavoisier (1784) provides new information for the classification of organic compounds or molecules on the basis of their sources. All compounds obtained from green plants and animal sources always contain carbon and hydrogen atom, and frequently, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus. Lavoisier also showing the close relationship between green plants and animal products. With the improvement of the analytical chemistry technique, the organic substances are reclassification into two classes, substances made from living organism and substances comes from non-living worlds.
Chemical science goes step by step by the scope of new information, changing definitions or classifications, and production of the new substance or molecule in chemistry. In 1828 Wohler converted ammonium cyanate into urea, a substance obtained from animal sources. It changes the definition and classification of organic chemicals. The previous definition of organic molecule completely ended with the synthesis of acetic acid from its component chemical elements by Kolbe in 1845. Therefore, the study of organic compounds in chemistry is the study of hydrocarbon or derivative of hydrocarbon compound or molecule.
