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Henry Rzepa's Blog

Henry Rzepa's Blog
Chemistry with a twist
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HypervalencyInteresting ChemistryACSElectronicsHigher EnergyChemieEnglisch
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Science is rarely about a totally new observation or rationalisation, it is much more about making connections between known facts, and perhaps using these connections to extrapolate to new areas (building on the shoulders of giants, etc). So here I chart one example of such connectivity over a period of six years.

GeneralEnergyEnergy PenaltyEnergy StabilisationFree EnergyChemieEnglisch
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In the previous post, I showed how modelling of unbranched alkenes depended on dispersion forces. When these are included, a bent (single-hairpin) form of C 58 H 118 becomes lower in free energy than the fully extended linear form. Here I try to optimise these dispersion forces by adding further folds to see what happens.

Chemical ITACSDOIGoogleHandleChemieEnglisch
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OK, you have to be British to understand the pun in the title, a famous comedy skit about four candles. Back to science, and my mention of some crystal data now having a DOI in the previous post. I thought it might be fun to replicate the contents of one of my ACS slides here. Firstly, a DOI is one implementation of a more generic (and quite old) concept known as a Handle. This is one form of a persistent digital identifier.

Chemical ITACSAmsterdamAmsterdam ManifestoDallasChemieEnglisch
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I have mentioned the Amsterdam manifesto before on these pages. It is worth repeating the eight simple principles: Data should be considered citable products of research. Such data should be held in persistent public repositories. If a publication is based on data not included with the article, those data should be cited in the publication.

GeneralBBCBritish Broadcasting CorporationProducerTomorrow's WorldChemieEnglisch
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A short post this, to remind that today is officially the 25th birthday of the World-Wide-Web, in March 1989. It took five years for a conference around the theme to be organised and below is a photo from that event. (C) CERN Photo From my perspective and perhaps from the 200 or so others present at that closing session, I went back home and told my young children that the world had changed that week. So it has.

Interesting ChemistryReaction MechanismActivation EnergyAnimationAromaticChemieEnglisch
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My previous post related to the aromatic electrophilic substitution of benzene using as electrophile phenyl diazonium chloride. Another prototypical reaction, and again one where benzene is too inactive for the reaction to occur easily, is the catalyst-free bromination of benzene to give bromobenzene and HBr.

Reaction MechanismCovalent SystemsFirst ProfessorFree EnergyImperial CollegeChemieEnglisch
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The diazo-coupling reaction dates back to the 1850s (and a close association with Imperial College via the first professor of chemistry there, August von Hofmann) and its mechanism was much studied in the heyday of physical organic chemistry.[cite]10.1021/ja00830a009[/cite] Nick Greeves, purveyor of the excellent ChemTube3D site, contacted me about the transition state (I have commented previously on this aspect of aromatic

Reaction MechanismChemieEnglisch
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A staple of introductory undergraduate teaching in organic chemistry is Markovnikov’s rule, which states: “ the addition of a protic acid HX to an alkene results in the acid hydrogen (H) becoming attached to the carbon with fewer alkyl substituents and the halide (X) group to the carbon with more alkyl substituents ”. Shortly thereafter, students are exposed to the “anti-Markovnikov” addition of borane to e.g.

PericyclicReaction MechanismPotential Energy SurfaceChemieEnglisch
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The potential energy surface for a molecule tells us about how it might react. These surfaces have been charted for thousands of reactions using quantum mechanics, and their basic features are thought to be well understood. Coming across an entirely new feature is rare. So what do you make of the following? The reaction is shown above[cite]10.1039/P19920001709 [/cite], and on the face of it, it looks like a normal pericyclic cascade.

GeneralInteresting ChemistryChemieEnglisch
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This is the time of year when I deliver two back-2-back lecture courses, and yes I do update and revise the content! I am always on the look-out for nice new examples that illustrate how concepts and patterns in chemistry can be joined up to tell a good story. My attention is currently on conformational analysis;