Comments

Cyclopentadiene (0.20) 105%

Very nice introduction!

Good and nice-to-read discussion!

Atropisomerism of Taxol (0.25) 90%

nice use of references

"One example of atropisomerism is that encountered for the cycloctene molecule and another are the two conformers 5 & 6, a derivative from Taxol."

Grammar is a bit misleading here, maybe you can write something along the lines of:

"One well-known example of atropisomerism is that encountered for the cyclooctene molecule; another one, investigated in this report, is that of the two different taxol derivatives 5 & 6 (in Scheme 3)."

"... bridgehead olefins ARE preferred. These SHOWED remarkable ..."

"Table 5. HNMR raw data"

Very good work. But as we discussed, having the literature values tabulated would have been very helpful.

Also, we talked about being careful with "statistic" explanations. So, earlier defined "more ambiguous" and "less ambiguous" signals, but you average them all, regardless of your findings and without discussing the effect how different functional groups might lead to greater deviations. These are things that you really have to put into your discussion.

"HNMR simulations are far better (<0.1 ppm) than those for CNMR (5-6 ppm)." We talked about that as well. Relatively speaking, a deviation of 5 out of 100ppm and 0.5 out of 10 would be very comparible.

These deviations are not very large, but they're acceptable.

"Hence, the average of the absolute deviation is a better representation of the deviation of the HNMR simulation."

Better than what? I'm not sure what you want to say here.

"This is unexpected since the twist up conformer is the highest energy conformation." How would you explain that? You put in a lot of work to lead up to that point in your discussion and you just end in saying, it is unexpected?

You should discuss potential reasons for that. And we talked about them all - be more critical on solvent effects, temperature and what they mean.

You mention them later on in the next paragraph, but from the placement within your report they seem very general and more like an afterthought. You should really embed them in your discussion directly and be more critical about what that means.

Crystal structures(0.05) 95%

Good section!

"Table 9. Bond lengths" Better use three digits for the values

Also, if you talk about "C8" etc., please refer to the picture this is shown in. You should always aim at making it easy for your reader to navigate through your findings "at one glance". ;)

Very nice pictures on the different approach vectors!

Epoxide NMR (0.05) 100%

"It would be expected that the proximity of the H7 proton to the epoxide function would deshield this proton further."

Yes and no, while this is generally true for aliphatic system, extended pi-systems - such as this benzene subunit - do have a lot of interaction going on thorugh the extended pi system. It might be, that the epoxide deactivates the ring's meta-postion. There's many effects going on at the same time

It is also impossible to determine which atom is which in experiment, if you don't take the multiplicity into consideration (singlets, doublets, triplets...)

Good discussion of your findings.

Optical Rotation and TS (0.35) 90%

A quick search on Reaxys showed Dihydronaphtalene oxide (39 deg - 140 deg) and Stilbene oxide (240 - 250deg). All in chloroform.

It is reasonably accurate, but your ignoring all the hints in the instructions.

Just because you find one agreement, doesn't mean that the method is accurate.

There's many literature references that disagree with your findings. Also, you need to discuss how exact the method is for values below/above 100deg. Effects of solvents, concentration temperature, to name a few.

Good intro on TS.

"The calculated ee values for the two substrates and catalysts are presented in table 15 above."

Please put "stilbene" in the table's caption!

Good effort on using the NCI here already, makes for a very nice discussion!

I'm missing the comparison to literature values, though! You're saying it's in agreement with literature? Then please show the literature data and discuss how/why it's differing.

QTAIM, NCI and product suggestion (0.10) 60%

You're missing the product suggestion.

Final thoughts

In an almost, but not entirely unrelated response to your dedication:

1) I completely agree, a PhD degree is really not all that it's cracked up to be - that can refer to both the degree itself or the person holding it.

2) People (psychologists, ethnologists, historians, philosophers etc.) have for quite a while been discussing the difference between rationality and intelligence and how the two aren't the same. I also seem to remember reading a quote on the internet saying that the idea of stupidity and intelligence being two opposites of the same thing is actually an invention of the 19th century bourgeoisie - I've got no idea if that's actually the case, but it sounds very fancy!

3) If you choose an answer to the following question at random, what is the chance you will be correct? A) 25% B) 50% C) 60% D) 25%

;)