Wednesday, July 2...
The following new items have been posted: Answer Key for POD#15, POD#17, notes from today's lecture
Today, we finished our discussion of the alkyne chemistry in Chapter 7, and we discussed how to approach solving synthesis problems in organic chemistry. This is exactly what you need to do in POD#16 (due by 3:00 p.m. on Thursday)! It is always a good idea to perform a retrosynthetic analysis before you propose a synthesis in the forward direction - look at the online handout for details.
On Thursday, we'll look at three important reactions that yield alkyl halide products, which all involve a radical chain reaction mechanism. We'll be drawing lots of "fishhook" arrows, to show how single electrons move in each step. As we'll see, every radical chain reaction mechanism involves three distinct parts: initiation, propagation, and termination. After we finish this discussion, which will bring us to the end of Chapter 8, you should be able to tackle POD#17 (due by 3:00 p.m. on Monday). This is a reaction that we will never discuss, but if you understand how radical chain reaction mechanisms work, you should be able to apply your understanding to the solution of this mechanism problem.
Time permitting, we'll also begin Chapter 9 on Thursday. We'll start by looking at what happens when an alkyl halide is exposed to a nucleophile. One possible outcome is a substitution reaction. We'll look at two specific examples that on the surface appear very similar, but in fact are rather different when we delve into the mechanisms. The two different nucleophilic substitution mechanisms that we'll introduce are extremely important! We'll keep seeing additional examples of these mechanisms next week, when we cover the chemistry in Chapters 10 and 11...
Finally, remember that deadline to submit regrade requests is on Thursday, at 12:00 p.m.
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Posted on Wednesday, July 2, 2008.