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 "HX" where X is a halide) results in the formation of alkyl halides. We’ve said many times in this series of posts that alcohols are poor substrates … [Read more...]
Rearrangement Reactions (2) – Alkyl Shifts
Rearrangement Reactions: Alkyl Shifts In the last post we saw how certain carbocations can sometimes rearrange (through hydride shifts) to give more stable carbocations. However, sometimes there are situations where a hydride shift would not lead to a more stable carbocation, such as in the case … [Read more...]