Question

Identify the carbonyl compound and the alcohol that were used to prepare the following acetal:

Short answer

Skeletal structure

Formation of starting materials

Step-by-step solution

Skeletal structure

Initially, the ball and stick representation is converted to its conventional skeletal structure. The grey balls are carbons, white are hydrogens, and red are oxygens. The skeletal structure is represented as follows:

Skeletal structure

Acetal

An acetal is a carbon with two alkoxide groups attached. The acetal carbon has hydrogen, so this must have been an aldehyde. The two alkoxide groups come from one-carbon alcohol (methanol). This gives the following starting material as follows:

Formation of starting materials