This is the thing that I struggle the most with. It has never been explained the right way to me and the O-Chem book that I have confuses me even more. Does anybody know of any tricks or methods for solving these type of problems or does anybody know of any books or websites that explains it in a very clear and simple way?
Does anybody know any tricks or methods for predicting products of a reaction
- Thread starter yh4747
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If you have absolutely no idea, try looking at which reactant is a nucleophile and which reactant is an electrophile. Other than that, you're better off memorizing the reactions and reagents
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The best way to approach this is to understand there are only a few types of reactions, alkanes will usually undergo radical substitution reactions, if in the presence of light or heat, alkenes and alkynes usually undergo addition reactions with electrophiles, carbonyl compounds often undergo nucleophilic addition reactions, aromatic reactions usually do electrophilic substitution reactions. These type of reactions are covered in a very straight-forward way in the David Klein text book. Your best bet is to take the book and try to go through each chapter, it is written in an easy to understand language, with very little emphasis on rigorous molecule orbital theory. Organic Chemistry is a discipline that takes a lot of study and a foundation must be built, no DAT prep book can take the place of first building a foundation and understanding the concepts. Having a general idea of a reaction mechanism with arrow movements to show electron flow can also help one predict products of a reaction.
I hope this helps……Best of luck
