Today we’ll talk about an incredibly important skill that might take some time to grasp but pays tremendous dividends. We’ll go through the exact details of how to use a pKa table. Understanding the proper use of a pKa table will give you the ability to recognize which acid-base reactions will happen and which will not. This will come up a lot as you progress through Org 1 and Org 2. It might be helpful to go back and review some of the factors that affect acidity that were talked about earlier.
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The importance of pKa values in organic chemistry can’t be overestimated, in my opinion. Not knowing pKa values in organic chemistry is like not knowing
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Understanding The Differences Between Nucleophilicity vs Basicity Following up on Nucleophiles and Electrophiles, here’s a common question students have about nucleophilicity: 1. What’s the difference
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Evaluating Resonance Structures With Negative Charges: Some Key Principles So far in discussing resonance forms we’ve mentioned three important principles that govern which resonance form
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Understanding The 7 Key Factors That Stabilize Negative Charge (And Ultimately, Basicity) Like I wrote about in a previous post, it’s good – but not
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Here’s an idea I’ve been playing with: levels of mastery. Growing up with video games, it’s an idea that is intuitively familiar, but not often
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Acid-Base Reactions Are Generally Faster Than Substitution Or Addition Reactions Here is a very common dilemma in organic chemistry as you move through the latter parts
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Putting Acidity In Perspective One concept that always seems to have a hard time getting through is that of pKa. No matter how many times
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