We are members of the Chem 215HH class taught at the University of Michigan taught by Dr. Melanie Sanford.

Reaction Mechanism

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The mechanism for our reaction involves radical halogenization.  Radicals were discovered in 1900 by Moses Gomberg, a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan.  His remarkable paper (cited on the references page) revolutionized chemistry.  Radical chemistry is a very complex area of chemistry; radicals are incredibly unstable and rarely observable.  Often, many radical mechanisms are possible to describe any given chemical transformation.  Chemists are forced to rely on chemical intuition when hypothesizing mechanisms for these transformations.  The mechanism shown here is one of the many possible mechanisms for the transformation from 24 to 79.

The animation is very fast, representative of the speed of radical reactions.

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Here is a perfect example of what you should NOT do in organic chemistry:

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