Questions tagged [physical-organic-chemistry]
For questions about how organic molecules and reactions are investigated using physical experiments.
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How Do Turing's Reaction-Diffusion Models in "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" Relate to Organic and Physical Chemistry?
I'm reading Alan Turing's "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" and its reaction-diffusion models:
https://www.dna.caltech.edu/courses/cs191/paperscs191/turing.pdf
As far as I understand ...
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Electrolysis of benzyl alcohol in methanol
I am conducting following electrochemical experiment on Au wires in organic medium:
I suppose the anodic reaction goes through a benzaldehyde intermediate:
The cathodic reaction is hydrogen ...
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Precessional frequency in H-NMR
Suppose we have a hydrogen nucleus. Now, let's apply an external magnetic field $B$. As the magnetic field is applied, the hydrogen nucleus undergoes precessional motion about its own axis with ...
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Is there a quantitative definition of inductive effect?
Usually, Inductive effects are compared using the electronegativities and distances. However, this only works in compounds with similar structures. For example, we can predict the following orders of ...
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pKa of acetic acid in pure NH3?
Acetic acid completely dissociates in liquid ammonia and I would like to know the $\mathrm{p}K_\mathrm{a}$ value for the acid in that solvent. Can anybody point me to a reference?
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Experimental determination of ring strain energy
For my thesis I am looking to expand a part of it to include experimental means of calculating ring strain, thus far I have calorimetry covering heats of combustion and hydrogenation as well as ...
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Why does wood burn but not sugar?
Fundamentally, they're both carbohydrates, although the cellulose in wood is essentially polymerized glucose, which combined with its isomer fructose forms sucrose.
So why does wood readily burn ...
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Calculating the Barrier Between Rotamers
There are two stable conformations of a medium-sized organic molecule roughly 5 kcal/mol apart in ground state energies. One is probably the global minimum conformer identified through a conformer ...
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What is this gel byproduct of acetylsalicylic acid recrystallization?
I did a very simple acetylsalicylic acid synthesis from salicylic acid and acetic anhydride (with phosphoric acid as a catalyst). After rinsing, filtering and drying the product I dissolved it in ...
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Cation/Anion UV-Vis absorption
I want to understand how the ground state absorption of a molecule shifts if an electron is added or removed. I found these two publications 1 and 2 that observe shifts, but both times a redshift, be ...
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Comparing rates of substitution reactions
The following question was asked in an exam I gave recently
Compare the overall rates of the following substitution reactions
$$\ce{CH3Cl ->[OH-][Weak P.A.S]
CH3OH}$$
$$\ce{CH3CH2Cl ->[OH-][ ...
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Energy Decomposition Analysis for SN2 involving ambident nucleophiles and an alkali metal counterion
I am wanting to perform an EDA on transition state structure of the nucleophilic attack of an ambident nucleophile (2 atoms that could be used in nucleophilic attack on the same molecule) on a benzyl ...
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How can we prevent retrogradation of starch?
Are there any additives which can prevent retrogradation of starch? I have prepared 13% of starch solution along with 2% of NaCl. The results were bit better. The synthesized gel was flowable with ...
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Band structure of solids in general
As my last question (Semiconductors and their electronic bands) was badly structured, I decided to elaborate my questions a bit.
As I now know, every solid/liquid forms a band structure, so all ...
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Why is cyclohexane more polarizable than benzene?
Looking at figure 4.2 here, we can see experimentaly that cyclohexane is more polarizable than benzene.
Why is this the case?
Intuitively, I would think that because the orbitals in benzene are more ...
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