Chemistry: Determining Polar or Nonpolar Properties of Certain Chemicals

[blackout85]

I need to determine whether these certain chemicals are polar or not:
Beta- sitosterol
Methyl cinnamate
Lapachol
Ethyl p-hydroxy cinnamate
Betulic acid
3,4,5- trihydroxy-7-methoxy flavone
Veratric acid
p-anixic acid


Many of them are difficult, If there is a website that could help in determing whether these compounds are polar or not I would appreciate it.

 

[Decan]

In order to figure out if things are polar or not, I like to look at diagrams...google your compounds individually and I'm sure you'll find a chemical structure.

For example, here's one for methyl cinnamate: http://www.thegoodscentscompany.com/data/rw1417571.html

Now that you know what it looks like, identify the major functional groups and try to figure out the properties of each. For methyl cinnamate, you have and ester...is an ester polar or non-polar. After you figure out functional groups, another property you can use to classify polarity is solubility. As a rule of thumb, like dissolves like. Hope that helps!