saturated and unsaturated carbon compound

Question

Why unsaturated carbon compound is more reactive than saturated carbon compound and why saturated carbon compounds are less reactive ?

 

Answer 1

Just so that we have our vocabularies understood:

Unsaturated carbons are those that have double bonds or trible bonds. While saturated carbons are those that only have single bonds.

The short answer is because of the presence of these double bonds and triple bonds in the unsaturated carbons.

 

For even more details, double bonds and triple bonds have pi bonds which are relatively less stable than their sigma bond counterparts (a fully saturated carbon has only sigma bonds). Because of these pi bonds, unsaturated carbons will react to form a more stable saturated carbon by an addition reaction. 

 

Hopefully this answers your question! If you have any more questions, please don't hesitate to ask!