Question

What does 3.5 degree of unsaturation tell you?

Answer 1

Answer:

It means the chemical entity is a radical

Explanation:

When we talk of unsaturation, we are referring to the number of pi-bonds in a chemical entity. The alkane, alkene and alkyne organic family are used to as common examples to explain the term unsaturation.

While alkynes have 3 bonds, it must be understood that they have 2 pi bonds only and as such their degree of saturation is two.

In the case of an alkene, there is only one single pi bond and as such the degree of unsaturation is 1.

Now in this case, we have a fractional 0.5 degree of unsaturation alongside the 3 to make a total of 3.5. So what’s the issue here?

The fractional part shows that the chemical entity we are dealing with here is a radical. While the integer 3 shows that there are 3 pi-bonds, the half pi bond remaining tells us that there is a missing electron on one of the atoms involved in the chemical bonding and as such, the 1/2 extra degree of unsaturation tends to tell us this.

Kindly recall that a radical is a chemical entity within which we have at the least an unpaired electron.