Cycloalkanes strain-free

What are the facts To measure the amount of strain in a compound, we have to measure the total energy of the compound and then subtract the energy of a strain-free reference compound. The difference between the two values should represent the amount of extra energy in the molecule due to strain. The simplest way to do this for a cycloalkane is to measure its heat of combustion, the amount of heat released when the compound burns completely with oxygen. The more energy (strain) the compound contains, the more energy (heat) is released on combustion. 

Figure 4.3 Cycloalkane strain energies, calculated by taking the difference between cycloalkane heat of combustion per CH2 and acyclic alkane heat of combustion per CH2, and multiplying by the number of CH2 units in a ring. Small and medium rings are strained, but cyclohexane rings are strain-free.

Because the heat of combustion of a cycloalkane depends on size, we need to looJk at heats of combustion per CH2 unit. Subtracting a reference value derived from a strain-free acyclic alkane and then multiplying by the number of CH2 units in the ring gives the overall strain energy7. Figure 4.3 shows the results. 

The data in Figure 4.3 show that Baeyer s theory is only partially correct. Cyclopropane and cyclobutane are indeed strained, just as predicted, but cyclopentane is more strained than predicted, and cyclohexane is strain-free. Cycloalkanes of intermediate size have only modest strain, and rings of 14 carbons or more are strain-free. Why is Baeyer s theory wrong ... 

The amount of strain in cycloalkanes is shown in Table 4.6, which lists heats of combustion per CH2 group. As can be seen, cycloalkanes larger than 13 membered are as strain-free as cyclohexane. 

O-M-O bond angles required. One can relate bite sizes (distances between the donor atoms) of strain-free chelate rings of different sizes to the dimensions of the chair form of the cyclohexane ring (39), which has the minimum steric strain possible for a cycloalkane. The bite size of strain-free four- and six-membered chelate rings both correspond to... 

Fig. 28 Nucleophilic ring opening of cyclic dimethylammonium ions [38], Free energies of activation relative to ring-size 6 against cycloalkane strain-energies. Energy units kcal mol"1. (Reproduced with permission from Di Vona et al., 1985)...

What can be said about the thermochemistry of methylated cyclic ketones in any phase other than liquid In that we would have discussed gas-phase species if the data were available, what we are really asking is what can be said about the species of interest as solids , Let us generalize this to see what can be said about the thermochemistry of cyclic ketones as solids. In that the cyclic ketones in the previous section were all formally quite strain-free derivatives of cyclopentanone or cyclohexanone, let us now consider only such species and their cycloalkane analogs. There are no enthalpy-of-fusion data available for cyclopentanone. For cyclohexanone, the temperature-uncorrected fusion enthalpy is about 1.3 kJmol-1—we arbitrarily ignore in this discussion enthalpies of any crystal - different crystal phase enthalpy. The same treatment for cyclohexane discloses the fusion enthalpy of 2.7 kJmol-1. Accordingly, the earlier reported value of 638(6) = 104.4 for the gas phase is sequentially modified to ca 115 kJ mol-1 for the liquid and to 113 kJmol-1 for the solid. For 2-norbomanone, adamantanone and diamantanone (39a, 42 and 43), the gas-phase differences of 115.7 6.8, 96.0 5.1 and 90.6 3.2 become for the solids 124.4 6.8, 116.9 4.5 and 97.8 3.1 kJmol-1. Very roughly, 639( ) is some 10 kJmol-1 more positive for solids than for gases and 639(8) is about 113 kJmol-1 for all of the solids discussed here. 

Before we discuss the ring strain of different cycloalkanes, we need to consider how ring strain is measured. In theory, we should measure the total amount of energy in the cyclic compound and subtract the amount of energy in a similar, strain-free reference compound. The difference should be the amount of extra energy due to ring strain in the cyclic compound. These measurements are commonly made using heats of combustion. 

Cyclohexane (n = 6) and the larger cycloalkanes (n > 14) all have heats of combustion per -CH2-group of around 658 kj mol-1, the same value as that of a -CH2- group in a straight-chain alkane, that is, they are essentially strain-free... 

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