last updated Friday, May 13, 2005

Meeting #13

General Announcements

1. The next quiz will be administered on Tuesday May 17, 2005 at 11 am. It will cover mainly the Grignard reaction and the esterification part of the project.

2. Please look start lookin for a partner for the last project. Your partner should be in a different time slot than yourself e.g. if you are in section 1A, your partner should be in section 1C, 1D or 1E and not from section 1A or 1B!

Homework questions

1. Referring to the nitration experiment, answer the following questions:

a. A mixture of nitric acid and sulfuric acid is used as nitration reagent. Show pertinent chemical equations.

b. What other function does the sulfuric acid have in this experiment?

c. Why do you have to control the temperature very careful in this reaction? How is this accomplished?

d. What are the most important changes in the IR spectrum going from methyl benzoate to m-nitro methylbenzoate?

2. When performing electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions, the groups that are attached to the benzene play a very important role in the reaction in terms of directing effect and rate of the reaction. Classify the following groups accordingly and explain briefly.

a. an ester bonded via the oxygen atom

b. trichloromethyl

c. iodine

d. amide bonded via the carbonyl carbon atom

3. a. Given the relative rates for the bromination and chlorination of toluene in the reader, calculate the product distribution for both compounds.

b. Which of the two reactions yields a larger quantity of the para-substituted product? Rationalize this observation.