November 25, 2024, 05:03:18 PM
Forum Rules: Read This Before Posting


Topic: Best way to find the mechanism of a reaction?  (Read 2138 times)

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

Offline Misa

  • New Member
  • **
  • Posts: 5
  • Mole Snacks: +0/-0
Best way to find the mechanism of a reaction?
« on: October 08, 2016, 05:04:25 PM »
Are there any good sources for finding the type of a reaction of interest that you would recommend? :D

Offline kriggy

  • Chemist
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 1520
  • Mole Snacks: +136/-16
Re: Best way to find the mechanism of a reaction?
« Reply #1 on: October 08, 2016, 05:23:51 PM »
Depends.
use Strategic aplication of named reactions, that is pretty good or wikipedia or organic chemistry portal

Offline spirochete

  • Chemist
  • Full Member
  • *
  • Posts: 547
  • Mole Snacks: +51/-9
  • Gender: Male
Re: Best way to find the mechanism of a reaction?
« Reply #2 on: October 08, 2016, 10:58:15 PM »
This may or may not be obvious depending on your experience level, but a good start is to look things up by functional group. You can do two different searches: once for reactions of the reactant's functional group, and then also for reactions that create the product functional group.

Offline orgopete

  • Chemist
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 2636
  • Mole Snacks: +213/-71
    • Curved Arrow Press
Re: Best way to find the mechanism of a reaction?
« Reply #3 on: October 09, 2016, 01:25:34 PM »
This may or may not be obvious depending on your experience level, but a good start is to look things up by functional group. You can do two different searches: once for reactions of the reactant's functional group, and then also for reactions that create the product functional group.

I'd go in the other direction and use a mechanism based book. I prefer to think of reactions as part of general patterns. For example, you can look at reaction of carbonyl compounds as those that simply add and those that may have an addition-elimination step. For the latter, you may realize that electron ewithdrawal is a guiding property.
Author of a multi-tiered example based workbook for learning organic chemistry mechanisms.

Sponsored Links