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Functional Groups
The behavior of any molecule in a particular chemical environment is determined by the stability or reactivity of its bonds. Each different type of bond shows different levels of reactivity.
Generally in a molecule there is a group of bonds that are more reactive than all the others and this group tends to determine how the whole molecule behaves in a particular chemical environment regardless of the structure of the rest of the molecule.
Chemists call these dominant groups of atoms and bonds functional groups and these are used to classify organic compounds into families.
Understanding the types of reactions that functional groups undergo will enable an understanding of how an organic molecule interacts with the environment.
A carbon-carbon double bond is an example of a functional group. Organic compounds that contain a carbon-carbon double bond and no other functional group are called alkenes (a family name used to classify these compounds). All alkenes react with bromine to yield dibromoalkanes
Hence if you know a functional group reacts in one molecule you can predict how it will react in almost all other molecules.
It is possible to get more than one functional group in a single molecule, but the generalisation stated above still applies.