Here we cover three new reactions of aromatic substituents: reduction of nitro groups to amines, protection of amines as amides, and the Baeyer-Villiger oxidation of ketones to esters Three More Reactions Of Aromatic Substituents In this section on reactions of aromatic compounds, … [Read more...]
How Bleach Works: Understanding Colors From Nature
Why are tomatoes red? Why are carrots orange? Why are egg yolks yellow? And... why is Vulcan blood green? OK, I'm not going to touch that last one, but as for the first three: great question. There are actually 15 chemical causes of color, but today we'll begin to explore the reason for … [Read more...]
Alkynes Are A Blank Canvas
Now that we've gone through all the major reactions of alkynes, we can take a step back and look at the big picture. There are lots of reactions of alkynes. So what? you might ask. In this post I will try to convince you that alkynes are really useful building blocks for synthesizing a large variety … [Read more...]
Alkene Addition Pattern #3: The “Concerted” Pathway
In contrast to alkene addition reactions in the Carbocation Pathway and the 3-Membered Ring Pathway, we saw in the last two posts that hydroboration of alkenes is anomalous. The regioselectivity of the reaction is "anti-Markovnikov" and the stereochemistry of the addition is "syn": We also … [Read more...]
Addition Reactions: Stereochemistry
In the last post on alkene addition reactions, we discussed one of the two key themes to look for in addition reactions: regiochemistry (in other words - what "region" of the alkene do different atoms end up forming bonds to?). This post is about the second key theme in addition reactions of … [Read more...]
Reagent Friday: Palladium on Carbon (Pd/C)
In a blatant plug for the Reagent Guide and the Reagents App for iPhone, each Friday I profile a different reagent that is commonly encountered in Org 1/ Org 2. It's almost been 100 years since Paul Sabatier was awarded the 1912 Nobel prize for his discovery that hydrogen gas will add to … [Read more...]
Reagent Friday: Raney Nickel
In a blatant plug for the Reagent Guide and the Reagents App for iPhone, each Friday I profile a different reagent that is commonly encountered in Org 1/ Org 2. Named reagents have a slightly mysterious air to them, conjuring up (for me, anyway) the image of a lone scientist working long … [Read more...]
Reagent Friday: Lindlar’s Catalyst
In a blatant plug for the Reagent Guide, each Friday I profile a different reagent that is commonly encountered in Org 1/ Org 2. Version 1.2 just got released, with a host of corrections and a new page index. One thing that's useful to keep in mind as you learn about reagents is that there are … [Read more...]