[vayden]

It was a simple question on an Organic II lab exam, or at least I thought it was when I answered it.
the question read,

"what organic byproduct is probably created during the formation of a Grignard reagent from 1-bromobutane?"

from this I untimely thought butane was the "organic byproduct," as Grignards are very reactive in the presence of water, we took extreme care in keeping the lab equipment dry in preforming this experiment.

I assumed since grignards react with water faster then they from and they would just form butane; since a Grignard would have  essentially acted as a base and deprotonated water to just leave the byproduct of butane.

on my exam I was marked wrong for this does anyone have any clue to what another "organic by product" would be?  I've reread the procedure and the mini lecture before the experiment in my lab book but I'm all out of clues.

[rolnor]

Could it be octane from Wurtz-coupling?

[vayden]

that is an interesting input, thanks I'll read up more on that.

[kriggy]

Why didnt you ask your teacher in the lab?

Also, what about butene by HBr elimination? In addtition to wurtz coupling