[directlyobservable]

Hi I'm new her and I have a question about isomers. I am ok with drawing isomers of alkanes, but I am not entirely sure about "equivalent carbon atoms". For example, in my lab manual it asks to draw the isomers of C₃H₅Br₃, and how many equivalent carbon atoms there are in each isomer. Is equivalent carbons referring to 1°, 2°, 3°, etc. or is it something else. I have googled a more general search of carbons in alkane substitution reactions, and a large amount of the results were NMR spectra stuff which is not being discussed in my class (survey o-chem). Anyway, I apologize if my post is done incorrectly. Thanks so much!

[Schrödinger]

Okay.

So Consider ethane. Now saying you want to add a bromine  atom(for convenience, lets say you want to only monobrominate) to it by say, photoirradiation of a mixture containing bromine and ethane. Does it matter which carbon gets the new bromine atom? I mean, yes after one H has been replaced by one Br atom, the resulting compound (1-bromoethane) has 2 kinds of carbons. One with Br and the other without the Br.

But what about ethane as such? Don't you think each carbon is equivalent? Meaning, they are indistinguishable?

[directlyobservable]

Thanks, so basically equivalent carbons are equal in all aspects with the atoms and/or groups that are attached to them right? So with ethane, each carbon is bonded to 3 hydrogens and the other carbon, so they are both equal. And that would apply in all situations?

[Schrödinger]

Yes. Unless the the molecule is radio-labelled at a particular atom. Radiolabelling is very useful is many arenas. Do check it out