Chemistry · Ch 12 — Basic Concepts of Organic Reactions
Introduction
Introduction
Knowing WHAT an organic reaction produces is only half the story -- this unit is about HOW it gets there: which bonds break, which electrons move, and what fleeting species form along the way.
What this unit sets out to do. By the end of it you should be able to:
- understand the concept of an organic reaction mechanism;
- describe homolytic and heterolytic fission of covalent bonds;
- identify free radicals, nucleophiles and electrophiles;
- classify organic reactions into substitution, elimination, addition, oxidation and reduction;
- describe how electrons move during an organic reaction;
- explain the electronic effects operating within covalent bonds.
Note
Otto Diels and Kurt Alder shared the 1950 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for working out the mechanism of the reaction between a conjugated diene and a substituted alkene -- now called the Diels-Alder reaction, and still one of the most powerful bond-forming tools in synthetic organic chemistry.