Methylene groups, attraction

At best, van der Waals interactions are weak and individually contribute 0.4 to 4.0 kj/mol of stabilization energy. ITowever, the sum of many such interactions within a macromolecule or between macromolecules can be substantial. For example, model studies of heats of sublimation show that each methylene group in a crystalline hydrocarbon accounts for 8 k[, and each C—IT group in a benzene crystal contributes 7 k[ of van der Waals energy per mole. Calculations indicate that the attractive van der Waals energy between the enzyme lysozyme and a sugar substrate that it binds is about 60 k[/mol. 

N-heterocyclic compounds containing six-membered rings (pyridine and analogues) behave as excellent -acceptors and in turn they provide a rather soft site for metal ion coordination. The 7r-excessive five-membered pyrazole is a poorer 7r-acceptor and a better 7r-donor and it acts as relatively hard donor site. Inclusion of six- and five-membered N-heterocycles like pyridine and pyrazole in one ligand system leads to very attractive coordination chemistry with variations of the electronic properties.555 The insertion of a spacer (e.g., methylene groups) between two heterocycles, which breaks any electronic communication, makes the coordination properties even more manifold. 

Also separation of homologs is better achieved by applying bonded phases of the nonpolar or reversed phase type because the methylene groups are only weakly attracted by the polar stationary phase which is already covered by eluent molecules. 

Calculations at the MP2(Full)/6-31++G(d,p)//MP2(Full)/6-31+G(d) level of theory were used to investigate the SN reactions between ammonia and aziridine, aze-tidine, methylethylamine, and four fluorinated derivatives of aziridine.52 The results show that aziridine and azetidine have strain energies of 27.3 and 25.2 kcalmol-1, respectively, and that as a consequence they react 7.76 x 1023 and 2.30 x 1017 times faster with ammonia than does the methylene group of methylethylamine. However, even after subtracting the effect due to the release of ring strain, aziridine still reacts much faster than the other two substrates. This is because the electrostatic attraction of the charges in the product-like dipolar transition state are much greater for aziridine. 

In summary the results observed in these studies [160] of poly(Sty-co-DVB) swelling in aromatic liquids serve to show that the method of measuring a is so sensitive that it can detect an effect caused by even the smallest modification in the molecular geometry of attached substituents, and that these differences correlate qualitatively with expectation based on the known principles of physico-organic chemistry of aromatic compounds. Since the observed a is the net effect of electronic attraction and steric hindrance between the sorbed molecule and the adsorption site, i.e. the monomer unit of the polymer, it would be impossible to separate quantitatively the electronic and steric contributions of a particular substituent. The ability to make such a differentiation, however, appears to be more promising with liquids that comprise homologous series of the type Z(CH2)nH (where Z is a phenyl, chloro, bromo or iodo substituent), since the added electronic contribution to Z by each additional methylene group is well known to be extremely small when n becomes >3 [165],... 

---