Pinacol rearrangement ring-expanding

When drawing the mechanism it doesn t matter which hydroxyl group you protonate or which adjacent OC bond migrates—they are all the same. One five-membered ring expands to a six-mem-bered ring but the reason this reaction happens is the formation of a carbonyl group, as in all pinacol rearrangements. 

The reaction they needed for the last stage is a pinacol rearrangement—the primary hydroxyl group needs persuading to leave as the ring expands. The problem is, of course, that the tertiary hydroxyl group is much more likely to leave since it leaves behind a more stable carbocation. 

Oxaziridines are converted to ring-expanded lactams under photochemical conditions. A-Tosyl aziridines with an a-hydroxyalkyl substituent give a pinacol rearrangement product in the presence of Lewis acids, such as Sml2> in this case a keto-A-tosyl amide. ... 

The symmetrical diols derived from cyclopentanone and cyclohexanone can similarly be converted to ring-expanded ketones in good yield. The diols from reductive coupling of cycloheptanone and cy-clooctanone give mainly the corresponding dienes in aqueous acid, especially when heated, but Chris-tol found that pinacol rearrangement is strongly favored even for these materials when cold concentrated sulfuric acid is used as the solvent. 

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