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    Reactivity and Selectivity in Organic Chemistry Reactions

    $7.47
    41 Pages | 6,725 Words

    If you are a student who has taken General Chemistry and you plan on taking Organic Chemistry, this book will prepare you to understand the underlying principles of Organic Chemistry. Specifically, it describes the concepts that will help you predict the reactivity of compounds in a reaction as well as predict the selectivity of product formation when more than one product can form. The concepts covered are nucleophiles, electrophiles, inductive effect, resonance effect, electronic effect, steric effect, angle strain and the HSAB concept as applied to organic chemistry reactions.

    This book is ideal for undergraduate science sophomores who are taking or will be taking a year-long sequence of organic chemistry. You must have taken a freshman chemistry course to understand the contents of this book.

    An Introduction to Reactivity and Selectivity in Organic Chemistry Reactions

    Most reactions encountered in undergraduate organic chemistry can be understood if a few basic concepts are mastered. The difficulty in memorizing reactions will be eased if reactions are understood. In my years of teaching organic chemistry, I ve found that students find organic chemistry doable and actually fun when they are able to rationalize the outcomes of reactions using a few basic concepts mastered early in the course. These concepts are mentioned below and we will attempt to explain each one in some detail to help undergraduate students like you to be more confident as you take this traditionally feared course on any campus! The concepts covered are nucleophiles, electrophiles, inductive effect, resonance effect, electronic effect, steric effect, angle strain and the HSAB concept as applied to organic chemistry reactions.

    This guide to understanding the reactivity of reactants and selectivity of product formation in organic chemistry reactions is designed to do just that. First we will learn the basic classification of chemical species into nucleophiles and electrophiles. This will enable us to predict the products of specific reactions. We will learn about the inductive effect and how it affects the reactivity of reactants. As many species can be involved in resonance, we will explore the resonance effect to better predict reaction outcomes. Because size of species matters in reactions, we will briefly introduce the steric effect on reaction selectivity. Then we will proceed to a special class of compounds, namely, cyclics which have an added strain called angle strain that affects reaction outcomes. Before concluding our discussion, we will touch upon stereochemical aspects of reactions. As a concluding section, we will use two examples to tie all these concepts together.