Organization, about this book

You will already have noticed something unusual about this book almost all of the chemical structures are shown in red. This is quite intentional emphatic red underlines the message that structures are more important than words in organic chemistry. But sometimes small parts of structures are in other colours here are two examples from p. 11, where we were talking about organic compounds containing elements other than C and H. 

MMl, MM2, MM3, and MM4 are general-purpose organic force fields. There have been many variants of the original methods, particularly MM2. MMl is seldom used since the newer versions show measurable improvements. The MM3 method is probably one of the most accurate ways of modeling hydrocarbons. At the time of this book s publication, the MM4 method was still too new to allow any broad generalization about the results. However, the initial published results are encouraging. These are some of the most widely used force fields due to the accuracy of representation of organic molecules. MMX and MM+ are variations on MM2. These force fields use five to six valence terms, one of which is an electrostatic term and one to nine cross terms. 

After completing a doctorate, he headed to Germany for a postdoctoral fellowship, then returned to Russia where he set about writing a book aimed at summarizing all of inorganic chemistry. It was while writing this book that he was forced to invent the organizing principle with which he is now invariably connected, namely the periodic system of the elements. 

This book is intended to work like a short course. The material is presented in a progressive sequence, and the tone is informal. You may notice that the discussions are paced more slowly than usual for a book of this kind. There is also a certain amount of repetition. No apologies are offered for this—it is deliberate. Remember, the purpose of this book is to get you past the "entry barrier" and "up-to-speed" on the basics. This book is not intended to teach you everything you wanted to know about. An extensive bibliography, organized by topic, has been provided to help you explore material beyond the scope of this book. Selected topics are also treated in more detail in the Appendices. 

The periodic table is a useful way to organize chemical properties. To help you see the patterns, the periodic table on the inside front cover of this book highlights the various groups of elements. As you learn more about chemical structure and behavior, you will discover the principles that account for similarities and differences in the chemical behavior of the elements. 

For some of the reactions described in this book, rather precise and detailed ideas about the reaction mechanism exist. However, for many catalytic reactions, the mechanistic understanding is very poor and further experimental studies are certainly needed. Calculations proved to be a highly valuable tool to gain a more precise picture of the reaction pathways. However, mostly only model systems can be studied due to the complexity of the problem. Anyway, it is the firm believe of the authors that for any reaction with an activation barrier a suitable catalyst can be found. This book shall give an insight into what has been achieved in this area concerning the synthesis of heterofunctionalized organic molecules. It is the hope of all contributors that future retro-synthetic schemes will include the catalytic approaches outlined in this book. 

We have used only two different solvents, deuterochloroform (CDC13) and hexadeuterodimethylsulfoxide (DMSO-d6). The former dissolves a large majority of organic molecules, but DMSO must be used for more polar substances. The disadvantage of DMSO is that it is very hygroscopic, so that even if you try hard to keep it dry you may find small signals due to water in your spectra. Look out for these in the spectra in this book they normally he at about 3.3 ppm. 

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