Chains, Branches and Rings In the earlier section, we mentioned the carbon compounds methane, ethane and propane, containing respectively 1, 2 and 3 carbon atoms. Such ‘chains’ of carbon atoms can contain tens of carbon atoms. The names and structures of six of these are given in Table 4.2.

Saturated and Unsaturated Carbon Compounds We have already seen the structure of methane. Another compound formed between carbon and hydrogen is ethane with a formula of C2H6. In order to arrive at the structure of simple carbon compounds, the first step is to link the carbon atoms together with a single bond (Fig. 4.6a) and…