Talk:Cacodyl cyanide

Where's the cyanide?

Just curious, not a chemist, but cyanide is C-N, all I can see here is As-N, so not acyanide, but it says "as it shares the chemical properties of both arsenic and cyanide". So no cyanide but 'has the properties of'. I don't understand. (later edit:) Ah, arsenic is a pnictogen, perhaps that what it's about? 88.111.143.177 (talk) 07:32, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

">As-≡N" is ">As-C≡N". --Leiem (talk) 08:27, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've added a model of the molecule to the article, based on an experimental structure determination. The reason the existing diagram doesn't explicitly show the carbon atom in the cyano group is it's a skeletal formula. This is a kind of shorthand notation used by chemists to avoid visual clutter in complicated organic compounds. Cacodyl cyanide is too simple a compound to make a skeletal representation essential but many chemists prefer to use them for (almost) everything - maybe not methane, though, which would just be a dot. A quick search of Wikimedia Commons didn't turn up any non-skeletal structural formulae for this molecule, which would be a helpful addition to the article. --Ben (talk) 09:21, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Heck that was quick! Yes, the skeletal formula was the one that threw me, I didn't look at the ball+stick. Now I can see the As..N bond is in fact 2, a single and a triple in line, implying a C between them, but that didn't register. Hopefully won't trip over that again. Thanks both! 88.111.143.177 (talk) 10:16, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Irrelevant question

Hi, as my last question (on the cyanidy-ness of this chemical) was answered so quickly, perhaps you can answer another that I asked on a separate page, here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Flephedrone#Chemically_speaking... which has not been answered for a long while. Basically I want to know why Flephedrone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flephedrone) has a wiggly representation of a C-C bond on its tail (top diagram, not the ball and stick). I've seen this, very occasionally, in other chemicals but no idea what it's supposed to represent. Thanks.

NB. That one's a drug and one's a ghastly toxin is happenstance, I'm interested only in the chemistry. 78.147.229.86 (talk) 10:33, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]