British Sign Language Glossaries of Curriculum Terms

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BSL Chemistry Glossary - alkene - Definition

Alkenes, as the sign suggests, have a double bond (as you can see on the screen) and this is how we identify this group of hydrocarbons (from their double bonds). All alkenes end in '-ene' and as you can see they all have the same general formula - ethene has 2 carbons; propene has 3; butene 4; pentene 5 and hexene has 6.

As you can see the name of each one ends in '-ene' and they all have this double bond. In the next column on the screen you can see the shortened structural formula and then to the right the full structural formula of each alkene.

To help us to work out each of these there is a general formula which is CnH2n so, for example, if we take butene, using the general formula there are 4 carbons (n = 4) and 2 x 4 = 8 hydrogens so the formula is C4H8. All of these alkenes have similar chemical properties and they all have double bonds.