40 ORGANIC AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY 



EXPERIMENT STUDY IX 



Amyl Alcohol 



Perform experiments i, a, b, c, d under Experiment Study VI, 

 using amyl alcohol. 



Polyhydroxy Alcohols 



In our study of the halogen substitution products we con- 

 sidered the products formed by substituting more than one 

 element in place of hydrogen. These compounds, e.g. chlo- 

 roform, CHCI3, iodoform, CHI3, and ethylene bromide, 

 CH2Br — CH2Br, are termed polyhalogen substitution products. 



In considering the alcohols thus far only the monosubsti- 

 tution products have been taken up. Exactly analogous to 

 the polyhalogen substitution products we have polyhydroxy 

 alcohols. The polyhydroxy alcohols are analogous as bases to 

 the polyhydroxy bases of the metals, e.g. calcium hydroxide, 

 Ca(0H)2, aluminium hydroxide, A1(0H)3, etc. They are, 

 therefore, often termed polyacid alcohols and will be diacid 

 alcohols, triacid, tetraacid, etc., depending upon the number 

 of hydroxyl groups present. These polyhydroxy compounds 

 which act as bases are termed polyacid because they react with 

 more than one molecule of univalent acids, i.e. the metal or rad- 

 ical in them will replace two, three, four, etc., acid hydrogens. 



Dihydroxy Alcohols. — It is a fact which has been pretty 

 well established that when two hydroxyl groups are united to 

 one carbon, the result is, in almost all cases, an unstable com- 

 pound which loses water, the hydroxyl groups being thus 

 broken. 



In agreement with these ideas is the fact that no dihydroxy 

 derivative of methane is known and also that the unsymmetri- 

 cal dihydroxy ethane, CH3 — CH(0H)2, is unknown, except as 

 derivatives. This will be taken up later. 



The simplest dihydroxy alcohol is the symmetrical dihydroxy 

 ethane known as glycol, CH2OH — CH2OH. This compound 

 is called glycol, because it has a sweet taste, as indicated by the 



