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Chemistry F324

Hi, i seem to have mis-placed my notes and i'm starting the A2 course next Monday i feel really demoralised as I've looked at the Jan 2010 paper and it looks really complicated, and i have a question in my summer homework is: "Use diagrams to explain how P bonding arises in a carboxylic acid group" the fact i can't answer this question is worrying....
Chillax dude! LOL.

You mean pi bonding i assume, The carboxylic acid head group has a HO-C=O group at the end of the chain. If you recall from alkenes, bonding that takes place above and below the plane of the molecule is called pi bonding. It's the same case here. The P orbitals on the C and the 2 oxygen atoms overap to form a pi bond which then allows the elecrons to delocalise across the three atoms. The effect is more pronounced if the H+ is lost and the group is a carboxylate group COO-. This extra stabilising effect is one of the reasons that carboxylic acids are acids, in that they become more stable when the H+ is donated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboxylate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carboxylate-resonance-hybrid.png

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