Chem 242 @ Dickinson

Acid Derivatives, Part 1

Today we started to talk about derivatives of carboxylic acids. We looked at the range of derivatives and spent a long time on explaining the relative reactivities. Hopefully, everyone understands the concept that relative reactivity has everything to do with the nature of the leaving group. We spent a brief time on how acid halides and anhydrides are formed from carboxylic acids and then finished up by looking at the Fisher Esterification reaction -- a complete mechanism which (surprise!) depends on the protonation of the O in a C=O bond to activate the C towards attack by a nucleophile. We then also saw that this process is reversible, allowing a chemist to make an ester from an acid, or an acid from an ester. I left you with the hope that you would stare at the mechanism over the weekend until you understood it.

As promised, a new problem set has been posted, along with next week's to-do list and the modeling instructions.

posted by DCChem @ 11:21 AM