I'm struggling to answer a question my chemistry teacher set. He asked us to imagine we had any equipment needed but only the following chemicals to determine which of 3 unknown compounds is the nitrile, amine and amide.
No true, but I don't think it's an experiment that will actually be done. Chemical tests should be avoided where ever possible
Yeah, it's strange. 2 years of organic/inorganic work at university and also worked for about 6 months at an organic synthetic chemical company, I've only ever used nmr/IR to work out what I've got, never chemical tests. Seems rather pointless teaching it at schools.
The same applies to an extend with the iupac nomenclature.