My PhD thesis involved determining kinetic isotope effects (KIE) for aromatic electrophilic substitution reactions in an effort to learn more about the nature of the transition states involved.[1] ...
Read ItHere I offer another spin-off from writing a lecture course on conformational analysis. This is the famous example of why 1,2-difluoroethane adopts a gauche rather than antiperiplanar conformation....
Read ItAllotropes are differing structural forms of the elements. The best known example is that of carbon, which comes as diamond and graphite, along with the relatively recently discovered fullerenes an...
Read ItOne of the (not a few) pleasures of working in a university is the occasional opportunity that arises to give a new lecture course to students. New is not quite the correct word, since the topic I ...
Read ItWe are approaching 1 million recorded crystal structures (actually, around 716,000 in the CCDC and just over 300,00 in COD). One delight with having this wealth of information is the simple little ...
Read ItPreviously on this blog: modelling the reduction of cinnamaldehyde using one molecule of lithal shows easy reduction of the carbonyl but a high barrier at the next stage, the reduction of the doubl...
Read ItThe reduction of cinnamaldehyde by lithium aluminium hydride (LAH) was reported in a classic series of experiments[1],[2],[3] dating from 1947-8. The reaction was first introduced into the organic ...
Read ItThe iconic diagram below represents a cornerstone of organic chemistry. Generations of chemists have learnt early on in their studies of the subject that these two representations of where the elec...
Read ItValence shell electron pair repulsion theory is a simple way of rationalising the shapes of many compounds in which a main group element is surrounded by ligands. ClF3 is a good illustration of thi...
Read ItArrow pushing (why never pulling?) is a technique learnt by all students of organic chemistry (inorganic chemistry seems exempt!). The rules are easily learnt (supposedly) and it can be used across...
Read ItInfra-red spectroscopy of molecules was introduced 110 years ago by Coblentz[1] as the first functional group spectroscopic method (” The structure of the compound has a great influence on the abso...
Read ItThe mechanism of forming an oxime from nucleophilic addition of a hydroxylamine to a ketone is taught early on in most courses of organic chemistry. Here I subject the first step of this reaction t...
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