ABSTRACT
Benzene is a special type of hydrocarbon. Derivatives are known by replacing the hydrogen atoms of benzene with substituents and/or functional groups. There are hydrocarbons related to benzene that have two, three, or more rings fused together (polycyclic compounds). The unifying concept of all these molecules is that they are aromatic, which means that they are especially stable with respect to their bonding and structure. Benzene is the parent of a large class of compounds known as aromatic hydrocarbons. The abbreviation “Ph” is used when benzene is a substituent, called a phenyl group. For disubstituted benzene derivatives, a specialized common naming system has been used for many years, other than numbers, to designate on which carbon atoms the methyl groups appear. Analysis of the overall conversion of benzene to bromobenzene shows that a bromine atom has replaced one H on the benzene ring.
