The oxidation of alkanols

Primary alcohols are oxidized to aldehydes and secondary alcohols to ketones. Tertiary alcohols cannot be oxidized any further, because of the missing hydrogen on the carbon atom to be oxidized. Primary, secondary and tertiary alcohols can therefore be differentiated by their oxidation products.

The oxidation which takes place here can also be demonstrated when introducing oxidation numbers.

Learning objectives

• Primary and secondary alcohols can be further oxidized by oxidizing agents.
• Aldehydes are thereby formed from primary alkanols, ketones from secondary alcohols.

Benefits

• Easy teaching and efficient learning by using interactive experimentation PHYWE-Software
• Experiment is part of a complete solution set with experiments for the topic Organic Chemistry matched with international curriculum: all topics are covered