Why carbon at left called alpha carbon instead of carbon at right as rule.
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When you start learning organic chemistry, it’s common to use Greek letters to denote this. So the carbon adjacent to a carbonyl is called an “α (alpha) carbon”, two carbons away is called a “β carbon”, and so on.
If we have a double bond between the α carbon and the β carbon it’s common to call it “α,β-unsaturated”. So we can have α,β unsaturated ketones, aldehydes, esters, and so on.
It can keep going beyond gamma, of course, but it’s rare to see it progress beyond ε (epsilon).
Another thing: aldehydes, esters, carboxylic acids, and so on, can only have one “alpha” carbon each, wheras ketones can have two. Sometimes you’ll see one set of Greek symbols marked with ‘ (prime) symbols to distinguish them. The location of the prime is completely arbitrary.
For esters, the OR group is not denoted “alpha”. It’s usually just called the “alkoxy” group.
If we have a double bond between the α carbon and the β carbon it’s common to call it “α,β-unsaturated”. So we can have α,β unsaturated ketones, aldehydes, esters, and so on.
It can keep going beyond gamma, of course, but it’s rare to see it progress beyond ε (epsilon).
Another thing: aldehydes, esters, carboxylic acids, and so on, can only have one “alpha” carbon each, wheras ketones can have two. Sometimes you’ll see one set of Greek symbols marked with ‘ (prime) symbols to distinguish them. The location of the prime is completely arbitrary.
For esters, the OR group is not denoted “alpha”. It’s usually just called the “alkoxy” group.
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