Alcohols & Acids
From fermenting sugar into ethanol to souring wine into vinegar, alcohols and carboxylic acids are two families of carbon compounds. Meet their functional groups, reactions and uses.
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Two carbon families 🧪
Ferment sugar and you make an **alcohol**; let wine sour and you make a **carboxylic acid**. Both are families of carbon compounds. This module meets their functional groups, their reactions, and how they are made.
Words to know 🔑
Four terms run through this module:
Two families compared ⚖️
Each family is defined by its **functional group**, the part that gives it its reactions.
A family trait 🎯
What do all the members of a homologous series share?
- The same functional group
- Exactly the same colour
- Exactly the same boiling point
- The same number of carbon atoms
Match each alcohol to its formula 🔗
- Methanol
- Ethanol
- Propan-1-ol
- Butan-1-ol
- CH3OH
- C2H5OH
- C3H7OH
- C4H9OH
Brewing ethanol 🫧
Ethanol is made by **fermentation**: yeast turns sugar into ethanol and carbon dioxide, in warm conditions without air. The watery mixture is then concentrated by **fractional distillation**, because ethanol boils at a lower temperature than water.
Acting like an acid ✅
Select the TWO reactions carboxylic acids show, like other acids.
- They react with metals to give hydrogen
- They react with carbonates to give carbon dioxide
- They turn into alkanes by themselves
- They stay completely unreactive
From sugar to spirit 🪜
An interactive activity.
Match each reaction to what it does 🔀
- Dehydration
- Oxidation
- Fermentation
- Combustion
- Turns an alcohol into an alkene
- Turns ethanol into ethanoic acid
- Makes ethanol from sugar
- Burns an alcohol to release energy
Read the CP 9.28C result 🌡️
An interactive activity.
Alcohols and acids in words 🧩
Alcohols all contain the _____ functional group, while carboxylic acids contain the _____ group. Ethanol can be made from sugar by _____ using yeast, then concentrated by fractional _____. When an alcohol loses water it forms an _____.
Spot the true statements 🖍️
An interactive activity.
Name the reaction 🧭
An interactive activity.
Explain the chemistry ✍️
An interactive activity.