Organic Chemistry 10th edition – Francis A. Carey

Organic Chemistry 10th edition

Overview
The power of X-ray crystallographic analysis was cited in Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin’s 1964 Chemistry Nobel Prize Lecture:
A great advantage of X-ray analysis as a method of chemical structure analysis is its power to show some totally unexpected and surprising structure with, at the same time, complete certainty.
From Linus Pauling’s 1954 Nobel Prize for research on the chemical bond, to Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin’s in 1964 for solving the structure of vitamin B12 and other biochemical substances, to Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka’s in 2012 for solving the structure of G protein-coupled receptors, chemists of all persuasions have shared a common interest in the structure of molecules. It is this common interest in structure that has guided the shaping of this edition. Its most significant change is the relocation of chirality, previously a Chapter 7 topic, to Chapter 4 where it now is closer to the other fundamental structural concepts such as molecular shape, constitution, and conformation. A broader background in structure, acquired earlier in this new presentation, is designed to provide students the conceptual tools they need to understand and apply the relationship between the structures of organic compounds and their properties.
Mechanism
The text is organized according to functional groups—structural units within a molecule that are most closely identified with characteristic properties. Reaction mechanisms are emphasized early and often in an effort to develop the student’s ability to see similarities in reactivity across the diverse range of functional groups encountered in organic chemistry. Mechanisms are developed from observations; thus, reactions are normally presented first, followed by their mechanism.
In order to maintain consistency with what our students have already learned, this text presents multistep mechanisms in the same way as most general chemistry textbooks; that is, as a series of elementary steps. Additionally, we provide a brief comment about how each step contributes to the overall mechanism. Section 1.11 “Curved Arrows, Arrow Pushing, and Chemical Reactions” provides the student with an early introduction to the notational system employed in all of the mechanistic discussions in the text.
Numerous reaction mechanisms are accompanied by potential energy diagrams. Section 5.8 “Reaction of Alcohols with Hydrogen Halides: The SN1 Mechanism” shows how the potential energy diagrams for three elementary steps are combined to give the diagram for the overall reaction.