[mir]

I have a Mass spectrometri course now. And while I was reading about the defragmentation process of ibogain, a really complex ringstructured nitrogen compound, it hit me...

How amazing it is, that all this is happening in a brief second. The defragmentation process following an alpha cleavage is exstensive! And the products is all ending up in stable molecules.

In my advance organic chemistry course we learned that - of course, but it is so easy to forget:
A molecule dont know the products before it reacts.

In theoretical chemistry we learned about the Potential Energy Surface (PES). And the reaction is travelling through the lowest energy path to reach the product.

So if Im walking through a valley in PES, and follow a river... Im very sure Im going to end up at the ocean sometimes. That is my product of my reactionwalk.

Is it wrong to see the reactions in MS or everywhere else, with this analogy?

And how do molecules find theyre way through the PES-landscape?

If this is true, then this will open I whole new world for my imagination :-)

[mir]

Just a thought. With the analogy of a landscape...
Could you imagine a chemical reaction as an explosion with the debris (Transition states and intermediates) not leaving the surface, but rolling around like billiard balls on the smooth energylandscape?