Organic chemistry elemental, electron

Organic chemistry, then, is the study of carbon compounds. But why is carbon special Why, of the more than 30 million presently known chemical compounds, do more than 99% of them contain carbon The answers to these questions come from carbon s electronic structure and its consequent position in the periodic table (Figure 1.1). As a group 4A element, carbon can share four valence electrons and form four strong covalent bonds. Furthermore, carbon atoms can bond to one another, forming long chains and rings. Carbon, alone of all elements, is able to form an immense diversity of compounds, from the... 

In the Brpnsted picture, the acid is a proton donor, but in the Lewis picture the proton itself is the acid since it has a vacant orbital. A Brpnsted acid becomes, in the Lewis picture, the compound that gives up the actual acid. The advantage of Lewis theory is that it correlates the behavior of many more processes. For example, AICI3 and BF3 are Lewis acids because they have only 6 electrons in the outer shell and have room for 8. Both SnCU and SO3 have eight, but their central elements, not being in the first row of the periodic table, have room for 10 or 12. Other Lewis acids are simple cations, like Ag. The simple reaction A + B- A—B is not very common in organic chemistry, but the scope of the Lewis picture is much larger because reactions of the types... 

For a threefold degenerate MO occupied by three electrons, a configuration of a triradical having a quartet multiplicity is required hy Hund s rule. In organic chemistry, systems of this type occur rarely but with transition element complexes, quartets, quintets, and sextets, they are common. 

Atomic structure is fundamental to inorganic chemistry, perhaps more so even than organic chemistry because or the variety or elements and their electron configurations that must be dealt with. It will be assumed that readers will have brought with them from earlier courses some knowledge oT quantum mechanical concepts such as the wave equation, the particle-in-a-box. and atomic spectroscopy. 

Electronic spectra may be used (as in organic chemistry) as fingerprints, and they are very important in kinetic studies. The change in the electronic spectrum of a reaction mixture as the reaction proceeds is often the best way of following its rate, and quite elaborate methods are available for measuring very fast reaction rates. However, the application which the reader is most likely to encounter in more advanced texts is in the area of coordination compounds of the transition elements, whose electronic spectra may yield information about structure and bonding. 

Silicon and carbon command dominant positions in inorganic chemistry (silicates) and organic chemistry (hydrocarbons and their derivatives), respectively. Although they have similar valence electronic configurations, [He]2s22p2 for C and [Ne]3s23p2 for Si, their properties are not similar. The reasons for the difference between the chemistry of the two elements are elaborated below. 

On a molar basis, most organic compounds contain similar amounts of hydrogen and carbon, and processes involving transfer of hydrogen between covalently bound sites rank in importance in organic chemistry second only to those involving the carbon-carbon bond itself. Most commonly, hydrogen is transferred as a proton between atoms with available electron pairs (l), i.e. Bronsted acid/base reactions. The alternative closed shell process, hydride transfer or shift, involves motion of a proton with a pair of electrons between electron deficient sites (2). These processes have four and two electrons respectively to distribute over the three atomic centres in their transition structures. It is the latter process, particularly when the heavy atoms are both first row elements, which is the subject of this review. The terms transfer and shift are used here only to differentiate intermolecu-lar and intramolecular reactions. 

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