IUPAC Nomenclature of Organic Chemistry

The IUPAC nomenclature of organic chemistry is a systematic method of naming organic chemical compounds as recommended by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). Ideally, every possible organic compound should have a name from which an unambiguous structural formula can be created.

For ordinary communication, to spare a tedious description, the official IUPAC naming recommendations are not always followed in practice, except when it is necessary to give a concise definition to a compound, or when the IUPAC name is simpler (e.g. ethanol instead of ethyl alcohol). Otherwise the common or trivial name may be used, often derived from the source of the compound (see below). In addition, very long names may be less concise than structural formulae.

Read more about IUPAC Nomenclature Of Organic Chemistry:  Basic Principles, Alkanes, Alkenes and Alkynes, Order of Precedence of Groups, Common Nomenclature - Trivial Names

Famous quotes containing the words organic and/or chemistry:

    And what if all of animated nature
    Be but organic Harps diversely framed,
    That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps
    Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
    At once the Soul of each, and God of all?
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

    For me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law, the principle of order in me, around me, and in the world.... I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: “I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.”
    Primo Levi (1919–1987)