Education Thread

[evertonfan]

Appreciated Nigel. Partridge is a personal hero of mine.

 

[Sureshot]

FWIW, he's nothing like Alan Partridge and talks about badgers a lot.

 

[shalin_hitter]

I am having a tough time in Organic Chemistry here.Giving my IGCSEs in November this year.Have been preparing good but Organic is just too difficult for mee.I am opting for engineering so bunked Biology and took ICT.
God I need help in Chemistry .

 

[Ollie_H]

ahh Organic Chemistry, what is it you need help on?

 

[Sureshot]

What particular area? Feel free to throw me some Q's on it.

 

[shalin_hitter]

What are Esters ??
How does Sopanification work and how do soaps dissolve grease?
and my final doubt is how have they developed soapless detergents

 

[Ollie_H]

nope, you must be doing triple award or a different exam board to me

 

[Sureshot]

What are Esters ??
How does Sopanification work and how do soaps dissolve grease?
and my final doubt is how have they developed soapless detergents

I'm off tomorrow afternoon, so if no one has responded by then, I'll have a look/ask friends in the know.

 

[shalin_hitter]

Thanks a lot buddy

 

[ste_mc_efc]

I start a uni course of medicinal chemsitry course in two weeks which has a large chunk of organic chemistry, so I should probably field this one. Stand by for an answer.

 

[treva]

Sports Journalism. I'd be lying if I said that my actual course is gonna be my first priority for my first fortnight or so though.

What Uni you at Matt? I really want to take Sports Journo but there's only 5 or 6 Uni's that do it. Need to go on a few open days to have a good look around them.

 

[ste_mc_efc]

What are Esters ??
How does Sopanification work and how do soaps dissolve grease?
and my final doubt is how have they developed soapless detergents

Esters are a group of compounds with the Rc(=0)OR' Functional group.

(that is the Carbon has one R group Attached, a double bonded oxygen, and a singled bonded oxygen which has another R group attached. Not sure what standard you're at but R groups are hydrocarbons chains, or sometimes just hydrogen)

They have fruity smells. Form polyesters (type of plastic) when polymerised.

Soaps dissolve grease because one end is hydrophilic and the other hydrophobic.

The hydrophilic end dissolves in water, the hydrophobic ends dissolves the grease which is then washed away in water.

Saponification is the hydrolysis of an ester with an alkali. It produces and alcohol and corboxylate salt.

i.e CH3COOC2H5 + NaOH > C2H5OH + CH3COONa.

Not sure what you mean by soapless detergent really, biological detergents? [enzymes]

Hope that helps.

 

[shalin_hitter]

Wow that was just brilliant.
That helped a lot in understanding Organics.
Now I hope i get A grades in Maths,Physics and Chemistry.
Thanks a lot buddy

 

[ste_mc_efc]

No problem.

 

[The Spin]

Wow, how in the world is a 73/100 a B? England's messed up, it's a C- over here and you're borderline failing.

No offense Leggie

But people in the UK get like an 84 or something and it's an A, here it's a low B, and is a strictly average score.

Weird, maybe the whole grading system is different over there.

I think it is probably something to do with the scaling system used. 73/100 is not a mark from an exam paper. The paper itself is actually out of 45 in this instance, I believe. This score is then converted into a score out of 100 with equal distribution of those taking the exam between marks, to take the difficulty of the paper into account. It is quite complicated to understand, but certainly will not represent any form of percentage.