ABSTRACT
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of the compounds of carbon. Even after it had become evident that these compounds did not have to originate in living processes, as once thought, but could be synthesized, it was convenient to retain the name "organic" to describe them and related compounds. Coal and petroleum provide two large reservoirs of organic material from which the simpler compounds can be derived that, when used as building blocks, will provide even larger and more complicated compounds. Each different assembly of atoms has its own characteristic set of chemical and physical properties. Well over a million of these compounds exist and the list is constantly expanding.
