Benzene

Benzene was first isolated by Michael Faraday in 1825 and is an example of an aromatic compound. "Aromatic" originally referred to the pleasant odors benzene and related compounds have. Today, however, aromatic and aromaticity refer to the unusual stability these molecules possess.

The picture above shows benzene as an electrostatic potential map, where colors are used to indicate calculated charge distributions. Red represents electron-rich regions and blue represents electron-poor regions. Intermediate levels of electrostatic potential are shown by orange, yellow, and green. The inner red area in the picture is due to the partial negative charge and the outer blue area is due to the hydrogens with partial positive charge.

The picture below (left) shows benzene as the more familiar ball-and-stick model and the picture below (right) shows the space filling model. The carbons are shown as dark gray atoms and hydrogens as light gray atoms.

Despite its stability, benzene undergoes a large number of reactions that lead to the formation of useful products such as sulfanilamide (the first sulfa drug) and ibuprofen (the active ingredient in pain relievers like Advil, Motrin, and Nuprin). Shown below, sulfanilamide and ibuprofen are just two of the many valuable compounds that incorporate the benzene ring in their structures.


Sulfanilamide	Ibuprofen

Last revised: March 14, 2005