Answer

Can you draw the structure of dimethylamine?

This compound has a nitrogen atom with three bonds; two to carbon atoms and one to a hydrogen atom.

We could continue by drawing the structure of trimethylamine, or ethylamine as additional examples of amines.

But I want you to be able to look at a structure and find the amine functional group.

So lets look at some more disgusting examples of amines to test your ability to find the amine functional group.

Have you ever smelled putrescine or cadaverine? These amines are found in urine and bad breath. How would you know these are amines, well not from the names, but by finding the functional group given the structure. Here are the structures of these two very smelly compounds.

Do you see there are actually two amine groups in putrescine and in cadaverine.

So we can recognize amine functional group by locating a nitrogen atom with three bonds one of which is to a carbon atom. We can use the notation R- as a carbon containing substituent. So the amine functional group is RNH₂, or R₂NH, or R₃N.

Return to man functional group page.