Chemical Forums
Chemistry Forums for Students => Organic Chemistry Forum => Topic started by: Jack23 on August 23, 2014, 10:02:57 AM
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Describe an experimental setup to visualize the SN1 and SN2 reaction between n-butylbromide, secondary-butyl bromide and Tertiary butyl bromide.
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Can you start to answer these for yourself? What would be the products of each reaction type and each substrate. Then once we know that, we can discuss how we'd visualize the reaction.
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That is simple. In case we neglect solvent effect the primary alkyl halide will go for SN2 reaction as it is having least steric effect. And tertiary halide will go for SN1 attack due to carbocation stability. And the other one will go for both SN1 and SN2. Once this is clear we have to think how to set up the experiment to visualize which pathway the compound is following? One hint I got from some of my friends that we can use phenolphthalein ion as a nucleophile for the reaction.
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AND product will depend upon which nucleophile we will be using.
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So whats your question? You asked us a question that you know the answer to?
-Zack
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TLC plates or HPLC will confirm your product.
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Like zsinger: alluded to, how will you visualize the difference between SN1 and SN2 on phenolphthalein?
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Or the second suggestion might work for any nucleophile, if you can work out the products and they're distinct enough. Now ,may be the time to stop working with theoreticals, and map out each reaction.
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No Zsinger! while posting the question I didn't knew the answer. And the explanation I wrote is just about how the reaction will go on while replying to ARKCON. But question is how you will visualize the reaction. Question remains if you will use phenolphthalein then how you are going to visualize the reaction.