>>11176635Alkenes and alkynes are pretty pedestrian and I'm not even an Organic Chemistry.
Essentials I'd say is from a synthetic point of view, the carbons have a partial negative charge so if deprotonated, can be used as a solid source of Carboanions and nucleophiles.
They can be hydrogenated through 3 main methods. The main being with hydrogen gas with a Pd/ C catalyst which will hydrogenated down to an alkane. The next is Lindlar hydrogenation which forms a cis-alkene. The final method is called a Birch Reduction which uses sodium in ammonia to form trans-alkenes.
Physically, they tend towards gases and are fairly acidic compared to alkanes because of their sp1 hybridization. They have a pka value of roughly 26 on average compared to 50 for alkanes.
