The Solvent as Ionizing Medium

The background to the studies described below has been discussed in earlier reviews (Reichardt, 1965 Reichardt and Dimroth, 1968 Kosower, 1968 Dack, 1970), and also in the text by Bethell and Gold (1967). 

The empirical ionizing power parameter, Y, was introduced by Grunwald and Winstein (1948) and was defined by eqn (5) with 

Since the solvent is present in large excess in a solvolytic reaction, it is not possible to determine from the kinetic order of the reaction 

Having noted that two correlations (Figs. 10 and 11), which appeared at first sight to support fully the choice of t-butyl chloride as a model compound, cannot be completely explained, it is not surprising that rates of a solvolysis of 1-adamantyl chloride do not correlate well with Y as shown in Fig. 12 (Morten, 1975). Similar 

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