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Topic: Is alpha-glucose and beta-glucose a hydrocarbon? or Carbohydrate?  (Read 4528 times)

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Offline Jekel0000

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I was counting the number of Carbons, Hydrogen, and Oxygens on Glucose a and b and I found that there were C6H12O6 so I assumed that the Polysaccharides in glucose ring structures are Carbohydrates because they fit a Cn(H20)n chemical formula...

Offline Babcock_Hall

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Re: Is alpha-glucose and beta-glucose a hydrocarbon? or Carbohydrate?
« Reply #1 on: December 30, 2013, 06:17:03 PM »
I would not call glucose a hydrocarbon.  I would only use that term to refer to something that had only carbons and hydrogens.

Offline Jekel0000

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Re: Is alpha-glucose and beta-glucose a hydrocarbon? or Carbohydrate?
« Reply #2 on: December 31, 2013, 10:24:39 AM »
I wouldn't call it a hydrocarbon either, but I always thought that the Cellulose and plant wall structures we composed mainly of Hydrocarbons, because in biology they call them STARCHES(and because starches are mainly formed of CxHy I assumed that was true, But from the image I attached you see that there are Cn(H2O)n atoms in the structural formula of the glucose a and b Monosaccharides that are really attached as Polysaccharides...
So does that mean that the molecule is a CarboHydrate? or does the molecule have to be a certain combination of Carbons with water?

Offline Borek

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Re: Is alpha-glucose and beta-glucose a hydrocarbon? or Carbohydrate?
« Reply #3 on: December 31, 2013, 11:41:41 AM »
starches are mainly formed of CxHy

Nope.
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Offline Babcock_Hall

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Re: Is alpha-glucose and beta-glucose a hydrocarbon? or Carbohydrate?
« Reply #4 on: December 31, 2013, 11:43:49 AM »
Let me give you a quick answer now, and perhaps I can tie up any loose ends later.  One, starch and cellulose are both polymers of glucose; therefore, they are isomers of each other.  The chief (but not the only) difference is in the stereochemistry of the acetal bond that connects C-1 of one glucosyl group to C-4 of another.  Two, starch is definitely not a hydrocarbon and it is a storage polymer, whereas cellulose is the main component of plant cell walls.

Three, it is a necessary (but not a sufficient) condition of a molecule to have the formula Cn(H2O)n to be a monosaccharide.  But polysaccharides do not conform exactly to this formula, because they lose one water for each acetal bond they form.  Metzler defines a carbohydrate as being either a mono- or a polysaccharide, and that works for me.

Offline Vidya

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Re: Is alpha-glucose and beta-glucose a hydrocarbon? or Carbohydrate?
« Reply #5 on: January 02, 2014, 08:43:46 PM »
I will also not call it as hydrocarbon.They are monosaccharides and are the basic units of many polysacchrides .Alpha and beta glucoses are the stereoisomers and are Diastereomers.

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