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Simple question about vinegar

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Simple question about vinegar

Postby CRbomber650 on Tue Feb 28, 2006 11:18 pm

Is vinegar acetic acid or ethanoic acid? My teacher said it was ascetic acid, but I took an online quiz saying that the name for was ethanoic acid. I am inclined to trust my teacher on this one, but the quiz is creating some minor doubts.
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Postby Abstract on Tue Feb 28, 2006 11:30 pm

Both are correct. ;)

Technically, ethanoic acid is the proper nomenclature, but the term "acetic acid" is much more commonly used.
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Postby MrMistery on Wed Mar 01, 2006 6:43 pm

ethanoic acid is the given to the substance by IUPAC(International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry). Acetic acid is it's common name.
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Postby Mjhavok on Thu Mar 09, 2006 1:07 am

Ethanoic acid would be more its name as given by chemists and acetic acid is what I think is called the trivial name or commonly used name.

For instance most enzymes now end is -ase, but when we first started naming enzymes we needed have a system and named them things like pepsin or trypsin.

In point both are names of the same acid.
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