Alcohols, Epoxides and Ethers

Making Alkyl Halides From Alcohols

Making Alkyl Halides From Alcohols In today’s post we show that treating alcohols with HCl, HBr, or HI (which all fall under the catch-all term

Tosylates And Mesylates

All About Tosylates and Mesylates By themselves, alcohols are poor leaving groups since the hydroxide ion (HO-) is a strong base The OH group can

PBr3 and SOCl2

PBr3 and SOCl2: Reagents For Converting Alcohols To Good Leaving Groups Alcohols can be converted into alkyl halides with phosphorus tribromide (PBr3) or thionyl chloride

Elimination Reactions of Alcohols

All About Elimination Reactions of Alcohols (With Acid) The hydroxyl group of alcohols is normally a poor leaving group. However, when treated with strong acid,

Elimination of Alcohols To Alkenes With POCl3

POCl3 For The Elimination Of Alcohols To Alkenes Phosphorus oxychloride (POCl3) is a useful reagent for cleanly performing elimination reactions on alcohols. POCl3 converts the

Alcohol Oxidation: “Strong” and “Weak” Oxidants

Simplifying Alcohol Oxidation: “Strong” Oxidants and “Weak”   Oxidants Here’s what we’ll talk about today: reagents for the oxidation of alcohols. For the purposes of introductory

Demystifying The Mechanisms of Alcohol Oxidations

Alcohol Oxidation Mechanisms, Demystified • The mechanisms for the oxidation of alcohols generally involve putting a good leaving group on oxygen, followed by deprotonation of an

Protecting Groups For Alcohols

Alcohol Protecting Groups There are many times when it’s useful to mask the reactivity of alcohols since their relatively high acidity interferes with strongly basic

Thiols And Thioethers

Thiols and Thioethers: Properties and Key Reactions If you can get beyond their foul smells, thiols have a lot of similar characteristics to alcohols! Like

Calculating the oxidation state of a carbon

Try applying the rules for calculating oxidation states to carbon.

It’s going to feel a little bit weird. Why? Because there are two key differences.

First, carbon is often more electronegative (2.5) than some of the atoms it’s bound to (such as H, 2.2). So what do you do in this case?
Secondly, unlike metal-metal bonds, carbon-carbon bonds are ubiquitous. So how do you deal with them?