Lecture: Conformational Energy and Molecular Mechanics
J Michael McBride - Yale
Description
Lecture Description
Understanding conformational relationships makes it easy to draw idealized chair structures for cyclohexane and to visualize axial-equatorial interconversion. After quantitative consideration of the conformational energies of ethane, propane, and butane, cyclohexane is used to illustrate the utility of molecular mechanics as an alternative to quantum mechanics for estimating such energies. To give useful accuracy this empirical scheme requires thousands of arbitrary parameters. Unlike quantum mechanics, it assigns strain to specific sources such as bond stretching, bending, and twisting, and van der Waals repulsion or attraction.
Course Description
This is the first semester in a two-semester introductory course focused on current theories of structure and mechanism in organic chemistry, their historical development, and their basis in experimental observation. The course is open to freshmen with excellent preparation in chemistry and physics, and it aims to develop both taste for original science and intellectual skills necessary for creative research.
from course: Organic Chemistry
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