[squirrlycellist]

I have ethene as my starting reactant and need to end up with ethanamine as a product. I've gone through my notes and the first step I could come up with was hydrogenating the ethene to remove the double bond. After that, I'm clueless. This may be even be the appropriate step. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Dan]

A better way to approach problems like this can be to work backwards: From what can amines be made? Which compounds could serve as precursors to ethylamine? How could those precursors be made from ethylene?

[Babcock_Hall]

If you hydrogenate ethene to make ethane, you are removing a functional group.  Alkanes are often poor choices as starting points for syntheses because they have no functional group.  Yes, you can sometimes add them, but not always selectively.

[squirrlycellist]

Working backwards is a great help. I will do that. Thanks.