Chapter 16, Problem 90QRT

There are millions of organic compounds known, and new ones are being discovered or made at a rate of more than 100,000 compounds per year. Organic compounds burn readily in air at high temperatures to form carbon dioxide and water. Several classes of organic compounds are listed, with a simple example of each. Write a balanced chemical equation for the combustion in O₂ of each of these compounds, and then use the data in Appendix J to show that each reaction is product-favored at room temperature.

From these results, it is reasonable to hypothesize that all organic compounds are thermodynamically unstable in an oxygen atmosphere (that is, their room-temperature reaction with O₂(g) to form CO₂(g) and H₂O(ℓ) is product-favored). If this hypothesis is true, how can organic compounds exist on Earth?