Vinyl alcohol

Vinyl alcohol, or ethenol, is the enol CH₂=CHOH. Under ordinary conditions it rapidly rearranges into acetaldehyde, its more stable keto tautomer.

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Keto–enol tautomerism: A reversible equilibrium between a carbonyl compound and an enol, involving transfer of a hydrogen atom and a shift of a double bond. Vinyl alcohol is the enol tautomer in this equilibrium; acetaldehyde is its keto form.
Ethenol: The systematic name for vinyl alcohol, the two-carbon enol CH₂=CHOH. This name identifies the structure directly and distinguishes it from its tautomer.
Wurtz reaction: A coupling reaction in which sodium joins two alkyl halide molecules to form a carbon–carbon bond. Adolphe Wurtz reported early evidence for vinyl alcohol in nineteenth-century experiments involving its derivatives.
Microwave spectroscopy: A spectroscopic method that probes molecular rotational transitions using microwave radiation. Rotational spectra provide a distinctive way to identify vinyl alcohol in laboratory samples and space.
Acetaldehyde enol: The enol tautomer of acetaldehyde, represented as CH₂=CHOH and identical to vinyl alcohol. This synonym makes clear that the names describe the same structure, not a competing molecule.
Acetaldehyde: A colorless, volatile aldehyde with the formula CH₃CHO, also called ethanal. It is the product formed when vinyl alcohol rearranges under ordinary conditions.
Structural isomerism: A relationship between compounds with the same molecular formula but different atom-to-atom connections. Vinyl alcohol and acetaldehyde share a formula but differ in connectivity and functional groups.
Adolphe Wurtz: A French chemist known for work on organic synthesis and the reaction that bears his name. His nineteenth-century experiments helped establish vinyl alcohol as a chemical species.
Radio astronomy: Astronomy that detects celestial objects through their emission or absorption of radio waves. Radio observations can identify vinyl alcohol through its characteristic molecular transitions.
Vinyl ether: An ether in which an oxygen atom is attached to a carbon–carbon double-bond carbon. Vinyl ethers resemble vinyl alcohol in having oxygen attached to an alkene carbon, but lack its O–H bond.