What is the Structural Formula for Alkene?

The structural formula is the actual arrangement of atoms in space. Right here, we have the structural formula for an alkene, in this case the simplest alkene, which is called ethene. You can write it like this. The structural formula for ethene takes this information right here and shows how the atoms actually exist in space in relation to each other. You see here that we have two carbon atoms up here. We have two carbon atoms down here.

Then, we have a hydrogen atom here and a hydrogen atom here, but they both have a subscript of 2. We know we must have 4 total hydrogen atoms. We see 1, 2, 3, 4 right here. This has 5 sigma bonds and 1 pi bond. All of these single bonds are sigma bonds. One bond of this double bond is a sigma bond and the other part of it is a pi bond. Another alkene is that of propene, which we have written right here.

I’m not going to draw the structural formula for this, but if we did you would see that it has one double bonded carbon atom. Now, alkenes we can also call olefins. Olefin means “oil forming”. We can call it alkenes “olefins”, because they react with chlorine to form oil-like derivatives. That makes sense that olefins would be called oil-forming, because they react with something else to create oil-like derivatives. That’s a look at the structural formula for alkenes. Remember that the structural formula is the actual arrangement of atoms in space.