Talk:Hydrocarbon/Archives/2018

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Isomers

Latest comment: 6 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion

I don't think having a column for "Isomers" in the table makes sense. For example, in the fourth row there are 2 isomers for butane, 4 for butene, 2 for butyne, 1 for cyclobutane, and 2 for butadiene. There are 11 isomers for the listed four-carbon hydrocarbons. So what does it mean to put 2 in the Isomers column? -- Ed (Edgar181) 12:46, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

@Edgar181: It means there are two possible isomers for butane whereas there are four for butene which is correct. Here are the 4 for butene and the two for butane. EvilxFish (talk) 15:00, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I think you can see the trend based on those examples, shall we put the information back into the page now or are you still concerned about it? EvilxFish (talk) 15:01, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Sorry about this one more thing. I think you may have a point in that the information may be misleading. Cyclobutane is an isomer of butene which would bring the total up to five... I guess if it's wrong/misleading we shouldn't have it in. And yes having 1 number at the end of the line is definitely not useful. I should have looked more carefully my bad EvilxFish (talk) 15:06, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

If you want the column to be a total of all the possible hydrocarbons with a certain number of carbon atoms, you need to find the number for all the individual subtypes (alkanes + alkenes + alkynes + cycloalkanes + alkadienes + other types not listed in the table). Unless you can determine that number for each row, having an "Isomers" column in the table won't be useful. -- Ed (Edgar181) 16:02, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@Edgar181: Agreed let's leave it out. EvilxFish (talk) 16:26, 7 February 2018 (UTC)