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Reductive Amination

…used as well. It’s possible to start with a primary amine and do two successive reductive aminations, obtaining a tertiary amine. Reductive amination does not work for forming bonds from…

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Intramolecular Friedel-Crafts Reactions

…still works. Why are intramolecular reactions good exam questions? Because they sort out the students who learn the reactions by memorizing a table of simple examples, and those who actually…

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Nucleophilic Aromatic Substitution (NAS)

…generally not energetically favorable, this is compensated by the fact that it restores aromaticity. [UPDATE: In the comments, Matt brings up a very interesting recent study that suggests that some…

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Alkylation of Amines (Sucks!)

…The best example of this is with methyl iodide, in a reaction called exhaustive methylation. Recall that methyl halides are the fastest-reacting alkyl halides in SN2 reactions due to their…

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Nucleophilicity of Amines

…this comes up is that nucleophilicity is much more sensitive to steric effects than is acidity/basicity. For example, t-butylamine is about as basic as other primary amines but is considerably…

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