Comments

Cyclopentadiene

Values are all correct. Good discussions of angles, strain and transition states

Nice reference!

Taxol

Great – you noticed all of the conformations and all calculations are correct –well done!

Nice inclusion of angles in discussion.

Could have discussed heat of hydrogenation? This may have given some interesting results!

NMR

“it is expected that the lowest energy conformation should be a chair and therefore the lowest energy conformer was not found”. –Are you sure?!

1H NMR – Good – a more in depth discussion of what you can see and the final assignment would have been nice but otherwise all correct

13C NMR- Great – corrections due to sulphur taken in to account- nice! Are you sure the large difference would be due to incorrect reporting? Is there nothing else that could be influencing things here…?

Epoxide

Crystal structure

Only minor points - figure numbers and references in the text would be useful here. Nice description of changes but a figure would be good here.

NMR

Would be nice if the rows matched up. Good that you realised both enantiomers would give the same results.

Rotations

Could look at what Shi/Jacobsen report? Otherwise good method and calculations are correct. Would be nice to see some workings.

No discussion of VCD/ECD

TS

Great.

QTAIM and NCI

Nicely done

Suggestion

Good!